



iff 







PRESENTED BY 



19lO_gL. 



EFFICIENT DEMOCRACY 




ROBERT M. HARTLEY : EFFICIENT EDUCATOR 

Page 142 



EFFICIENT 
DEMOCRACY 



BY 

WILLIAM H. ALLEN 

General Agent, New York Association 

for Improving the Condition 

of the Poor 

Secretary, Committee on Physical 
Welfare of School Children 




NEW YORK 
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 

1908 



Am 



Copyright, 1907 
By Dodd, Mead and Company 

Published, April, 1907 



3-ij ; 

Mr. * ; a]p& Be- -mar 
Oct, M 



DEDICATED TO 

€mtlp €♦ &ttItam£on 

EFFICIENT FRIEND 
OF CHILDREN 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I The Goodness Fallacy 1 

II Statistics Ostracised 14 

III The Simple Ingredients of the Statis- 
tical Remedy 25 

IV The Business Doctor 45 

V The State as Doctor 60 

VI Hospital Efficiency 83 

VII School Efficiency 113 

VIII Efficiency in Charitable Work 142 

IX Efficiency in Preventing Crime 183 

X Efficiency in Religious Work 204 

XI Efficiency in Government 222 

XII Municipal Bureau of Statistics 239 

XIII Efficiency in Civic Leadership 263 

XIV Brief for the Establishment of an 

Institute for Municipal Research 279 

XV Efficiency in Making Bequests 301 

XVI A Chapter of False Syntax 328 



PREFACE 

This book is an attempt to stimulate desire on the 
part of the reader to apply efficiency tests to himself 
as governor and governed. 

To be efficient is more difficult than to be good. The 
average citizen honestly in favour of what he calls 
good government does not } T et understand that there 
are an intelligence and an efficiency as far beyond the 
reach of inefficient goodness as is business efficiency 
beyond the reach of mere good intention. 

To test the goodness of a citizen, trustee or public 
official requires more than human judgment. Efficiency 
can and should be tested by those who benefit when it 
is present and suffer when it is lacking. Efficiency 
fosters goodness as time clock and cash register foster 
habits of punctuality and honesty. The goodness 
that has lasting value to one's fellow-man will 
be greatly increased and more widely distributed if 
efficiency tests are applied to all persons and all 
agencies that are trying to make to-morrow better than 
to-day. 

Goodness tests waste character and energy by ask- 
ing or allowing goodness to undertake work for 
which it is not prepared; efficiency tests, by adjust- 
ing burden to capacity, utilize character to its 
utmost. 



viii Preface 

The particular kind of intelligence needed by de- 
mocracy is intelligence as to government and not in- 
telligence as to ethics, fiction, law and business. A 
man may be a walking dictionary, living encyclopedia, 
bacteria wizard, or virtue personified, and yet not in- 
telligent as to government. Given 100 so-called best 
citizens in a church parlour and 100 frequenters of 
a Bowery saloon, and it would be a rash man who 
would feel sure that the average intelligence as to 
government, its needs, its justice, its methods was 
higher in the parlour than in the saloon. In nearly all 
lines of business, in housekeeping, in certain branches 
of hospital, school and church work, it is already 
realised that good service means efficient service, 
that an honest man who is inefficient can do more 
to defeat the purpose for which he is employed than 
a dishonest man compelled by intelligent supervision 
to render efficient service. So far as this principle is 
accepted, efficiency tests are substituted for goodness 
tests. Where standards of administration are unsatis- 
factory ; where taxes are too high and buy too little ; 
where schools waste taxpayers' money, pupils' time and 
democracy's opportunity; where results of religious 
work are disappointing; where hospitals regularly 
incur deficits; where crime is neither controlled nor 
understood; where civic and educational leaders make 
futile protests against political corruption; where 
good intention is permitted to cover a multitude 
of administrative sins; where charity injures those 



Preface ix 

it aims to help; — efficiency tests will be found 
lacking. 

Fortunately the ingredients of the efficiency test are 
simple: desire to know, unit of inquiry, count, com- 
parison, subtraction, percentage, classification, sum- 
mary. This book aims to awaken desire to know the 
essential facts regarding the administration of busi- 
ness, health, school, church, juvenile court, hospital, 
charity, bequest and government. It is addressed not 
so much to experts in accountancy, finance or political 
science as to that larger body of laymen who believe 
in representative government and are willing them- 
selves to make sacrifices that their own intention and 
opinion shall be effective and democracy efficient. 

Attention is especially invited to the Brief for 
the Establishment of an Institute for Munici- 
pal Research, Chapter 14. Millions of dollars are 
spent annually in this country to teach the ideals 
of government and the theories that shape its ma- 
chinery. Universities and colleges and even high 
schools are introducing courses in political science, 
economics and sociology ; yet universities, colleges and 
high schools are ignoring the vast mines of informa- 
tion contained in the current experience of American 
cities and states. There is at present no mechanism 
for learning and publishing the facts of social life 
and public administration. Without these facts upon 
which to base judgment, the public cannot intelli- 
gently direct and control the administration of town- 



x Preface 

ship, county, city, state or nation. Without intelligent 
control by the public, no efficient, progressive, trium- 
phant democracy is possible. 

Of the chapters included in this volume, The Good- 
ness Fallacy appeared in World's Work (November, 
1906) ; Hospital Efficiency in the Journal of Sociol- 
ogy (November, 1906) ; Efficiency in Making Be- 
quests in the Atlantic Monthly (March, 1907) ; Sta- 
tistics Ostracised, in Modified Form, in the Outlook 
(February, 1906). 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Robert M. Hartley 


Frontispiece 


Governor Charles E. Hughes Facing 


page 10 


Herman M. Biggs, M.D. 


a 


" 72 


John J. Cronin, M.D. 


66 


" 80 


Frank Tucker 


66 


" 98 


U. S. Bureau of Education 


(i 


" 138 


Rev. Edward Judson 


a 


" 210 


L. G. Powers 


a 


" 228 


Frederick A. Cleveland 


M 


" 258 


Robert W. de Forest 


a 


" 274 


Rockefeller Institute — Junior Sea 




Breeze 


66 


" ao* 


BLANK FORMS 






A Tentative Census Schedule 




Page 134 


Daily Report for Relief Visitor 




" 160 



EFFICIENT DEMOCRACY 
i 

The Goodness Fallacy 

Good men will administer well. This is the Goodness 
Fallacy that hampers civic progress and weakens 
church, charity, hospital and school. Like many 
other fallacies, it is attractive because of its promise 
and its flattery. Goodness, good, upright, conscien- 
tious, honourable and sterling are among the words 
that justify Talleyrand's definition of language, — 
"A means of concealing thought." We attribute to a 
speaker such noble qualities as he extols. To protest 
the need for good men as officers and directors is one 
way of advertising the quality of those who demand 
goodness. To uproot the Goodness Fallacy, there- 
fore, is to deprive ourselves of one of the most sooth- 
ing narcotic influences; namely, solemn auto-compli- 
ments "we know ain't so." Convinced that Good Gov- 
ernment, in whatever field, will never be possible so 
long as goodness is to be the sole or even the chief 
qualification of public officers, it is proposed to substi- 
tute an Efficiency Test for the Goodness Test. 
Goodness is a false criterion for three reasons : First, 



2 The Goodness Fallacy 

we cannot agree upon its meaning. Second, it does 
not prevent the continuance of bad government. 
Third, other tests have been proved to be more trust- 
worthy. 

To apply consistently the goodness test in our choice 
of officer is impracticable, because we are by no means 
of one mind in our definition of goodness. To some of 
us, working and playing golf on Sunday are evils 
worse even than smoking cigarettes, playing cards, or 
using profane language. Hundreds of thousands of 
good people cannot believe in the goodness of others 
who refuse to subscribe to some particular orthodoxy 
or to a program of Sunday closing, prohibition or 
woman's suffrage. The incarnation of evil to the 
avenue, the ward healer, is the incarnation of good 
to the alley. One man deems ingratitude, selfishness 
or evasiveness incompatible with goodness ; while his 
neighbour overlooks these weaknesses if the candidate 
attends church regularly, supports his poor relations, 
organises enjoyable picnics, erects handsome monu- 
ments or gives liberally and frequently to charity. 
In other words, the Good Man we talk about so much 
does not exist ; or rather he exists in so many shapes 
and types that the composite can never be found. 
In defining the goodness qualification we never come 
nearer to agreement than this : You and I are seeking 
a type of public man that you, the audience, and I, 
the speaker, want each other to think we are. 

Does the goodness test fail to stop bad government? 



Goodness Often Supports Wrong 3 

Serious as is the indictment, history justifies it. 
Most revolting crimes and most stupendous blunders 
have been committed from good motives, for example, 
the Spanish Inquisition, the massacres of Dronghela 
and St. Bartholomew, the expulsion of the Moors, 
Huguenots and Acadians, the murderous proselytis- 
ing of Mohammed, the crucifixion of Christ. Religious 
zealotry too often ends in hate of man. To protect the 
goodness of Athens Socrates was made to drink hem- 
lock. Epoch-making fallacies have always found 
earnest supporters among good men acting from good 
motives. The Hindoo mother is good when she throws 
her baby into the Ganges ; the western crusader is goor! 
when she takes law into her own hands and smashes 
saloon property; excess of patriotism led the Con- 
tinental Congress to mistrust Washington; the good 
men of the South turned whitecap when the good men 
of the North forced an alleged vicious reconstruction 
policy upon them. In every contest our country has 
known goodness has supported wrong as well as right. 
Ldyalism in 1776 was the monopoly of good men, the 
kind we now want to enter politics ; Patrick Henry 
and James Monroe did their best to defeat the new 
constitution in 1787 ; the Knownothings were pre- 
eminently good; the Presbyterian, Baptist and Meth- 
odist churches divided over slavery; Horace Greeley 
was Lincoln's harshest critic. There are at this very 
time good men so bigoted as to believe that all who 
oppose trusts, protective tariff, high license, are good 



4 The Goodness Fallacy 

while all who defend them are bad. Thus it happens 
that knowing a man to be good, upright, honourable, 
ehristian, furnishes no basis whatever for determining 
whether he believes in free silver or gold only, whether 
he is protestant, catholic, or Jew, republican or demo- 
crat, socialist or reactionary, total abstainer or mod- 
erate drinker, a help or a hindrance to his fellow- 
man. Still less does it of itself indicate his suitability 
for position of mayor, auditor, alderman, pastor, 
hospital trustee or school superintendent. 

The goodness test wherever tried has been found 
wanting. History does not record the birth of the 
fallacy. It is unknown among primitive people. A 
merely good man had a poor chance among American 
Indians or Macedonians. The Norse must be able 
to fight, the Spartan must endure hardship and pain 
without flinching. For one brief period, "while 
Mediaeval Europe was sleeping off its debauch," the 
ideal of negative goodness was preached in spite of 
Christ's demand for effective goodness. The stormy 
reaction against self-centred religion and death-deal- 
ing filth drove asceticism into the background and put 
a premium on definite, objective, countable evidences 
of goodness in things done. The Quaker with his love 
of peace and friendliness threatened for a time to re- 
vive inactive goodness, but even Quaker approval 
demanded thrift, industry, business efficiency, and a 
good memory as to terms of contract. Neither the 
mediaeval despot nor his benevolent successor of the 



Goodness A Fetish 5 

eighteenth century selected marshals and fiscal 
ministers because of unimpeachable goodness. De- 
mocracy has never in practice been willing to honour 
and obey mere goodness, which seems to be a fetish 
reserved for latter-day critics of representative gov- 
ernment, and for every-day use in religious, charitable 
and educational administration. 

Outside of reform politics and so-called uplift work, 
we are primarily interested in goodness only as it may 
have a bearing on efficiency. Even in friendship con- 
geniality is not conterminous with goodness ; we ask 
much more of a companion for an evening or for life. 
Our photographer must know how to take pictures ; 
our dressmaker or tailor must know how to fit clothes ; 
we do not forgive a blundering dentist because he is 
of irreproachable character. We measure the caterer's 
viands, not his morals. A gardener must grow beauti- 
ful plants, not good intentions. We buy a paper for 
its news and editorials, not for the goodness of its 
editor. Men of affairs do not advertise for "good 
girl stenographers." Good boys do not always win 
honours in school or promote school progress. Whether 
or not a builder has good motives is less important 
than whether he follows his contract. It has been 
found cheaper to pension "good" servants than to 
employ them. Shopping would be impracticable if 
the shopper were to seek good owners instead of good 
values. Goodness alone never qualified a woman to 
play Magda or Lady Macbeth; how many are too 



6 The Goodness Fallacy 

good to tip a customs inspector? A good man's club 
organised to disclose and prevent corrupt city govern- 
ment recently discovered that instead of having a 
surplus of $2,800, as advertised, it was over $40,000 
behind. Politics has given numerous illustrations of 
unspotted leaders dooming good causes to failure be- 
cause of their inefficiency. Goodness is not chosen 
to general an army in time of war; it cannot carry 
the heavier burden in time of peace. Stevenson was 
speaking of an inefficient good prince when he said, — 
"I would rather see a man capably doing evil than 
blundering about good." 

The modern Diogenes does not go about with a 
lantern seeking goodness ; he looks for efficiency and 
expects goodness to be thrown in. He imposes a merit 
test and that test is based upon visible, countable re- 
sults. He looks at the service rather than the server, 
and finds the cash register worth a dozen letters about 
goodness. In certain positions, to be sure, fidelity 
and goodness have a direct bearing upon service ren- 
dered, but most fiduciary relations require not only 
faithfulness and secretiveness, but ability to remem- 
ber and to use the knowledge entrusted. A flagman's 
honesty does not atone for his inability to keep awake. 
Goodness in business matters has come to imply per- 
formance that is satisfactory, which in the world of 
business means efficiency. As among primitive men, 
inefficiency is bad, hurtful to one's fellow-man, a drag 
that is inimical, if not immoral. No man is good 



Being Good For Something 7 

unless good for something. Goodness is subjective 
and beyond scrutiny. Goodness for something is 
objective, and may be counted, weighed, tested. 

In church work the goodness fallacy still persists, 
but is rapidly losing ground. The preacher must not 
only be good, but must know how to preach satis- 
factorily and to arouse general interest in parish work. 
To quote a celebrated divine, "After many painful 
lessons we have come to learn that when the stars 
spell G. P. C, they are quite as apt to mean Go Plough 
Corn as Go Preach Christ." The complex civilisation 
of our day, the possibilities and requirements imposed 
upon the pulpit by intelligence in the pew and by 
outside social conditions, have rendered it very diffi- 
cult to procure effective pastor and efficient preacher 
in one man. Many churches are still compelled to 
compromise and to tolerate a poor preacher because 
of his unusual civic or parish leadership, or to over- 
look poor parish work because of effective preaching. 
But in very few parishes is a pastor now retained 
because of goodness only, even rural districts and the 
more ignorant city congregation, immigrant or negro, 
generally demanding more than goodness in their 
pastor. Ability to sing is beginning to be accepted 
as an indispensable qualification for the choir. Goody- 
goody books circulate little farther than water runs 
up hill. In selecting Sunday-school teachers, however, 
district visitors, city missionaries and committeemen, 
goodness and desire to do good are still extolled and 



8 The Goodness Fallacy 

permitted to hamper church progress, — against the 
law of attendance and interest, which, unknown to 
teachers and deaconesses, is effecting a revolution and 
a transition to the efficiency measure. For the foreign 
field medical missionaries of approved training are 
preferred, while all must first pass physical, educa- 
tional and personality tests. Theological seminaries 
with lengthening courses, rigid examinations by men 
who apply the test of probable results, teachers' 
classes, deaconesses' training schools, — everywhere 
the unmistakable repudiation of the goodness test. 

Not long since charity work was relegated to good 
souls, as was nursing. Superannuated preachers or 
Sunday-school teachers, some recently widowed church- 
member, high-minded young women or young men of 
"exceptional character," "sterling worth" and "good 
habits," were charged with the responsibility of re- 
deeming the sinful or unfortunate suffering poor. 
We have now pretty generally gone over to the point 
of view that training, fitness, capacity to perform, are 
indispensable and by no means coexistent with desire to 
do or with mere goodness. To make this conviction 
more general three different schools of philanthropy 
have been recently organised in New York, Chicago 
and Boston. Even volunteer workers, it is now main- 
tained, must be trained and their work supervised. 
Yet in many offices where clerks, stenographers, relief 
visitors, are chosen because of some efficiency test, 
executive officers and directors represent a survival of 



In Hospitals and Schools 9 

the goodness fallacy. It is still too generally assumed 
that good men may direct efficient and detect inefficient 
employees, — bankers and lawyers thus applying to 
themselves as trustees a test that they have found 
next to worthless when applied to their own employees 
and business associates. 

Similarly in the world of hospitals the goodness fal- 
lacy survives in the choice of managers, in fewer 
instances in the selection of matrons and superinten- 
dents. For reasons that are obvious experience has 
substituted efficiency for goodness as a test of physi- 
cian, nurse, and charwoman ; there is a growing ten- 
dency to apply the efficiency test to the bookkeeper 
and steward. But as to the managers themselves, the 
idea is cherished that a hospital will be run satisfac- 
torily if its managers are "best citizens," "eminent" 
and of "undoubted worth." 

In schools, too, as a rule, goodness has given way to 
efficiency as the avowed test for teacher and janitor, 
but not for school trustee. Neither the last named 
nor those who select him realise as yet that there 
is just as definite a measure of a trustee's fitness to 
direct as of a teacher's fitness to teach. Goodness has 
not in the past prevented egregious waste and error 
in school management. Nor has it analysed school 
experience so as to prevent the neglect of needy chil- 
dren, the ruthless waste of child life and the con- 
tinuance of errors for decade after decade. The school 
text-book trade has been promoted in country as well 



10 The Goodness Fallacy 

as city by methods that in deception, favouritism, 
shamelessness, vaunted altruism and number contam- 
inated surpass the possibilities in any business not 
supervised by goodness. 

Different types of charitable organisation have paid 
heavy penalties for overestimating goodness. A 
classical example is furnished by the Lyman School 
for Boys. Year after year its directors, all praise- 
worthy altruists of the "Massachusetts type," lauded 
in general terms the wonderful character-building in- 
fluence of this school. A chart was prepared for the 
Chicago Exposition to portray graphically this influ- 
ence. But to the chagrin of all, the chart when 
completed showed that a distressingly large percentage 
of the boys were serving second and third sentences 
at various penal institutions, while a painfully small 
percentage could be referred to with pride. The 
directors believed their chart and devised for future 
guidance a new test, namely, results counted, efficiency. 

At first thought politics may seem not to have felt 
the blighting influence of the goodness fallacy. In 
reality it is precisely in politics, — applied citizen- 
ship — that the evil results of this fallacy are most 
serious. The reader will doubtless remember the an- 
guish experienced when he first heard the statement, — 
"Democracy is still on trial." To the American, drilled 
during school days in the principles of the Declaration 
of Independence, it is a cruel shock to hear the theory 
or the fact of representative government challenged. 




GOVERNOR CHARLES E. HUGHES 

whose messages, speeches and letters are characterized by 
frequent use of " efficient " and "efficiency." 



In Charity and Politics 11 

But as repeated evidences of trust abused dull our 
sensibilities, confidence and reverence give way to doubt 
and thinly disguised contempt. We are fortunate if 
cynicism does not lead beyond extenuation to direct 
or indirect participation in corrupt gain. Not less 
dangerous is the attitude expressed by a religious 
journal, — "If such corruption must exist, it should 
not be published." To some it is a consoling thought 
that Rome was not built in a day and that our national 
heroes have each and all found it necessary at times 
to overlook trifling aberrations from the strict path of 
rectitude in the interest of larger harmonies ; there 
is, therefore, ample time to mend slowly. The rank 
and file, however, live on reading about bribes, about 
sacred pledges broken, about ruthless violence at the 
polls or in the market place, — sluggishly resentful, 
yet convinced withal, that in matters of government 
peculiar codes obtain which condone if they do not 
glorify, the defeat of representative government and 
the success of evil. 

At first glance there is hope in the far-reaching 
remedies suggested: universal education, restriction 
of immigration, referendum, manual training, proper 
home surroundings, opportunity for child play, whole- 
some recreation, civil service reform, woman suffrage, 
municipal ownership, Christian spirit, prohibition of 
the liquor traffic, doing good, electing good men to 
office, etc. But important as each remedy may be, 
we have abundant testimony that none is adequate 



12 The Goodness Fallacy 

of itself. Many of our worst corruptionists had in 
their youth unusual opportunity. Franchise stealing 
has gone on unabated during the administration of 
good men. The rural American sells his vote and his 
honour quite as readily and at times more cheaply than 
the foreigner herded in the city tenement. Civil ser- 
vice perpetuates incompetence, which in turn makes 
possible special favour and the misuse of funds. 
Homes where education, wholesome recreation, oppor- 
tunity for play, are part of the standard of living 
turn out men who vote consistently for corrupt politi- 
cal machines. The boldest plunder of our day was in 
a city where municipal ownership exists and where 
municipal operation failed. As for Christian spirit, 
some other test is needed than communion with a re- 
ligious body, for do not all of our chief boodlers and 
abettors of political wrong support some creed and 
contribute to some church? Growing distrust of 
panaceas is part of the general discouragement, which 
in its extreme manifestation denies all curative and 
preventive medicine for fear of entertaining quacks. 
We sit back in our study or at our business desk and 
relieve our souls of responsibility by reflecting that 
publicity will cure in time. 

While believing unqualifiedly in the right sort of 
publicity, I know of no cure-all so futile and mis- 
educating as the publicity that reveals theft and dis- 
honour and immorality without properly locating and 
explaining the disease whose surface signs make 



The Key to Efficient Goodness 13 

scandal for magazine and newspaper. If the truly 
religious are to impress Christian standards upon gov- 
ernment, if the educated are to give the benefit of 
their "enriched personality" to government, if the 
various remedies for political corruption hitherto 
offered are to be tested fairly, there must be means 
of estimating closely the conditions which make for 
corruption, injustice, ignorance, misery and in- 
effective public opinion. There is one key — Statistical 
Method — which offers to trusteeship what the block 
signal gives to the train despatcher, a prompt record 
of work accomplished and of needs disclosed. 



II 

Statistics Ostracised 

To retrieve a fallen reputation is more difficult than 
to build anew. Caesar benefactor may be praised only 
after Caesar tyrant is buried. Confidence will not 
return until prejudice is removed. Statistics must pay 
the penalty for being now in ill repute. Ostracised 
and distrusted, it does not and should not "belong." 
Magazines impose a veritable quarantine before ad- 
mitting it to the society of rhyme, fiction and adver- 
tising; they emphatically exclude it from the title- 
page. Shunned by the untutored with almost super- 
stitious dread, it is openly abhorred by the learned as 
dull, untrustworthy, even venal, a deserving butt for 
witticisms that never grow old, — "There is a hierarchy 
of liars, — plain liars, expert liars and statistics." 
Similar contumely and prejudice are meted out to 
Statistical and Statistician, the only near kin to 
Statistics that have not successfully repudiated their 
relationship. Proud words like State and Statesman- 
ship have appropriated for themselves the reputability 
of the original Stat family. Not only have the acci- 
dents of two centuries favoured the pretenders, but 
Statistics and Statistician have too often seemed 
flagrantly to court disfavour. Whatever service these 



Prejudice Against Statistics Justified 15 

family blacksheep have rendered to mankind is ob- 
scured by their offences against clearness, interest and 
fairness, until few there are so poor as to do reverence 
to their mission or to acknowledge their important aid 
to social betterment. The statistician has, like the 
magician, yielded to the temptation to make his art 
seem beyond the reach of ordinary intelligence. When 
friends attempt a defence, they are apt to use lan- 
guage so technical, polysyllabic and foreign that the 
defence becomes itself an indictment, justifying the 
popular prejudice against all things statistical. 

The wage earner ought to be grateful for economic 
statistics, when he is told that they are "a mass of 
facts expressed in figures which throw light on the 
economic organisation." The mother whose infant 
has died from a preventable disease should welcome 
vital statistics — "the science of numbers applied to the 
life history of communities and nations." Perhaps 
we have a right to expect public officials and captains 
of industry to covet a technique that an eminent 
lecturer and writer introduces with these words : "We 
understand as statistics, somewhat superficially con- 
sidered, an extensive range of practical rather than 
theoretical problems. They are characterised by the 
effort to penetrate into the multitudinous phenomena 
of political and social life, of nature and civilisation, 
by the enumeration of characteristic facts, by classifi- 
cation and explanation." But for some years to come 
captain, official, mother and labourer will not appreci- 



16 Statistics Ostracised 

ate their indebtedness to Statistics if it must be de- 
scribed in such language. 

Next to unintelligibility, the chief weakness of Sta- 
tistics that may be frankly admitted is untrustworthi- 
ness. The jocular admonition, — "Always indicate 
what you want to prove when you ask for statistics," 
was born of experience with the kind of statistics and 
statistician we know best. Who has not been victim- 
ised by spellbinders and spellbreakers of various 
political faiths, bent upon demolishing their opponent 
with statistics? Overwhelming proof vindicates pro- 
hibition ; similar statistics differently shuffled prove its 
utter failure. The tariff is a national crime ; by the 
same token, — statistics — it becomes the source of pros- 
perity. Public officials stand on the statistical record 
of their administration ; which very record proves their 
downfall when opponents arrange the statistics. After 
we have seen the same proposition proved and dis- 
proved conclusively by the statistical method, should 
we wonder that men come to attribute the black lart 
to statisticians, classing them with lawyers who present 
not the truth, but a case, — assorted facts magically 
arranged to enforce magical conclusions ? 

If confusion and untrustworthiness are weaknesses, 
dulness is almost a crime. With words and subjects 
as with men, a bore is more offensive, because less 
entertaining, than a violator of law. Like reading 
aloud in monotone, statistics are unforgivable and un- 
permissible if only because they bore. We rarely learn 



When Statistics Bore 17 

when bored. Yet who of us has not been bored almost 
to extinction by having our distinguished attention 
called to the difference between $75,213,408.53 and 
$73,907,055.84? We simply say, "What of it? Why 
take my time to listen to things that even you cannot 
remember without notes?" We are willing to grant 
that the statistician's mental gymnastics are wonder- 
ful. But he does not interest — he dare not therefore 
claim even the pretence of a hearing from me. / don't 
care for statistics, I don't trust them, I can't under- 
stand them. To them I am always "out." 

This verdict is deserved, every bit of it, italics and 
all. The only question is, whether it is statistics alone 
that we dislike, or dulness, confusion and untrust- 
worthiness, no matter what names they bear. Is not a 
bore by any other name as dull and exasperating? 
A familiar illustration of the defects conceded in the 
statistics and statisticians we know best is that of 
the mind subject to what the psychologist names 
"total recall," too close narration of non-essential 
details. This disease was characterised by one of two 
sisters whose voice once sounded clear above the roar of 
a tunnel train, — "Caroline, I just can't be interested in 
people I have never seen." In a little Minnesota 
town I once followed a crippled boy about for two 
hours hearing him repeatedly describe a runaway. "You 
see this bottle (an inch phial) ? Well, at about fifteen, 
no, thirteen, minutes to eight, Buck was standing at 
Doc's head, and I was holding the bottle like this, and 



18 Statistics Ostracised 

was just after putting the cork in like this, when Doc 
started to run," etc. Like the small boy and Caroline, 
statisticians have erred not in trying to teach us the 
statistical method of learning interesting truths, but 
rather in trying to interest us in unimportant, uninter- 
esting or forbidden subjects, this last including our 
own weaknesses, misinformation and false beliefs. 

It was not always thus with Statistics. This much 
hated word began life in 1648 as the name for facts 
"which concern obviously the prosperity of the state, 
either in obstructing it or contributing to it." It is 
the direct descendant of an earlier word 

Staats — merk — wiirdig — keiten. 
Of the state — note — worthy — things. 

For a century and a half it was considered an honour 
to be acquainted with Statistics. Rulers vied with one 
another in seeking worthy things, and sent agents 
to 'all corners of the earth to count facts that would 
add to political wisdom in their states. The pro- 
fessional counter of notable things found a ready 
market for his wares. Kings came to see that one 
of the most notable things of a state was its current 
experience. During the French Revolution the con- 
viction that social facts would further liberty, equality 
and fraternity was so strong that an elaborate ma- 
chinery was built up to discover and compile such 
facts. Unfortunately the men who counted went about 
uninstructed as to what constituted a remarkable 



Every Man Likes His Own Statistics 19 

thing. They passed over many matters of great inter- 
est that might have been counted, and tried to measure, 
weigh and guess about other things that could not 
be counted or measured. The tendency to guess was 
unchecked because those who had been supposedly 
keeping count of acts and acres had not in mind the 
same facts which the government investigator desired. 
As in other European countries and in America, a vast 
amount of useless and biased misinformation was given 
out in the name of Statistics that confused those who 
read and those who tried to apply it. The hitherto 
cherished title, Statistician, came to be a term of 
opprobrium, implying dull, untrustworthy, unintelli- 
gible statements or guesses about uninteresting things, 
or lies, white and black, about interesting things. 

Far from being the inventors of confusion, untruth 
and dulness, Statistics and Statistician are largely 
responsible for the clearer vision we have each year as 
to human needs and adequate remedies. Unconsciously 
we have grown more and more dependent upon them. 
We regulate our lives such as they are by decisions 
based upon somebody's use of the statistical method. 
Calamity, the improvident man's chief teacher, bows 
itself out when Statistical Method appears. No intelli- 
gent man can afford- — he cannot truthfully say — that 
he loathes statistics, for this would convict him of 
moving with his eyes closed. He may mean that he 
loathes the mental exertion necessary to learn new 
truths or that in general he prefers guesses to facts. 



20 Statistics Ostracised 

But in some definite field or fields he will be found a 
great stickler for the essentials of the statistical 
method, for every man is proud of his efficiency in at 
least one thing, if only in ability to be practical. The 
physician who confesses that he abhors statistics care- 
fully keeps a statistical record of his own cases and 
will talk for hours of medical experience described by 
figures. The woman who denies ever having read 
statistics knows and loves to recount the innumerable 
combinations employed in her games of whist or 
euchre. The cook scorns recipes, weights and 
measures after, not before, her eyes and hands have 
learned to weigh and measure. Among the men who 
make fun of statisticians are many who keep on their 
minds and inflict on their friends the intimate record of 
baseball teams and fast horses. The village gossip is 
using the statistical method when she exploits in detail 
the gowns or the shortcomings of her neighbours. 

The statistical method has no monopoly of figures. 
The dulness attributed to it is due to the people or 
subjects with which we first saw it associated, as a 
treasured animosity or aversion not infrequently pur- 
sues certain names. As well claim that a dictionary 
represents the power of language as that figures are 
the essence of statistics. The kind of statistics we 
dislike or distrust is that used by people we dislike or 
distrust, or in behalf of theories we cannot tolerate. 
Our own figures, supporting an esteemed conviction, 
we call common sense, everybody's preference, rule of 



Universal Use of Statistics 21 

trade, natural law or obvious fact; figures of our ad- 
versary or of a stranger we call statistics. Did you 
ever hear a tourist express belief in statistics? Prob- 
ably not, yet fortunes are made by publishing figures 
and dimensions and ages whose chief use is to interest, 
if not to mis-educate, the tourist. We may abhor 
"dates," yet few grown men have the courage to admit 
that they know no history or that they avoid it when 
possible. 

We love to recite the population of our city or of our 
nation. We are proud of our city's business, a mag- 
azine's circulation, a child's weight or our uncle's 
millions. The oldest inhabitant differs from the pro- 
fessional statistician more in the subject of his disser- 
tations than in his love of recounting facts. The miser 
is as much a statistician as the actuary of an insurance 
company, the difference being in the use they make 
of their talents and not in the simple means of learning 
the truths that interest them most. An encyclopedia 
is not so readable as a detective story, but, like the 
lawyer's digest, the railway guide, books of quotations, 
handbooks of useful information and statistics, it is a 
means of saving time, effort and expense. 

The historian who is afraid to say the "sun rose 
over Bunker Hill" without foot-noting his authority, 
or the Greek professor who drills a class to recite 
Section 173, B, § 1, has courage to despise the sta- 
tistical method when used by teachers of economics. 
Carpenters and plumbers are quite as statistical as 



22 Statistics Ostracised 

political scientists. The mathematician does not sneer 
at the Q. E. D. of geometry, the scientist at Newton's 
Law, the physician at Materia Medica, the arch- 
aeologist at Pompeii's ruins nor the geologist at the 
rough-hewn statistics of nature, yet their method of 
reaching truth is that of the social statistician. The 
mariner carries a compass, the business man keeps 
books to know the geography of his business, the sur- 
veyor sets stakes to show where he started and whither 
he is going, the lyceum of the country school keeps 
minutes of its proceedings. All these operations are 
one in kind with the minutes of man's acts out of 
committee known as statistics or social bookkeeping. 
Since we all use statistics and the statistical method for 
the matters that interest us most and about which we 
know most, such prejudice as exists against statistics 
is directed to subjects that have not as yet interested 
us or to the steps involved in learning interesting 
truth. 

As technique is necessary for the composition and 
rendering of a beautiful symphony, for the painting 
of a portrait or the construction of a cathedral, so is 
technique required for the discovery and expression 
of truth regarding a large number of labourers, a 
large number of streets, a large number of patients, a 
large number of pupils, or a large number of personal 
characteristics. As we learn to separate the technique 
of the artist or builder from the truths they express, 
so we may come to accept the truth of the statistician 



Statistical Method Saves Energy 23 

without prejudice. To regard either the clerk who 
records or the figures that are recorded as the essence 
of statistics is as false as to measure a musician's work 
by the appearance of the written page instead of by 
the message the ears receive. We do not condemn a 
builder or his triumphal arch because he has employed 
figures and scantling. No more should we lose the 
soul of statistics in the materials and method required 
to discover and express that soul. If the workman 
"enters so largely into the statistical field as almost 
to render the production of statistics superior to or 
more important than the conditions or facts which 
give rise to them," the obvious remedy is to change 
workmen, not to condemn technique and statistics. 

Would you shun the fire as harmful 
In that once it burned a church? 

Both the prejudice against statistics and its defence 
have their counterpart in the evolution of labour- 
saving devices. The substitution of mechanism for 
hands is still deplored by many who would prefer 
to have printer's type made by hand. They dislike 
the typograph that combines the reporter, typewriter 
and typesetter. They overlook the fact that the free- 
ing of intelligence from routine makes it possible to 
apply it to something more worth while. To define 
limits within which one's personal weaknesses shall be 
permitted to burrow is to widen the circumference of 
one's higher capabilities. The adding machine and 



24 Statistics Ostracised 

the interest-book give bankers a chance to spend their 
time in developing their business. Like them, the 
statistical method saves for to-day's use the thought, 
good fortune and experience of yesterday. 



Ill 

The Simple Ingredients of the Statistical Remedy 

Since the vigorous crusade against proprietary med- 
icines that in the name of health were spreading broad- 
cast the appetite for drugs and alcohol, a large portion 
of the thinking public has come to demand that the 
ingredients of every remedy be printed on the label. 
In all fairness the statistical method should not only 
proclaim the beneficent results that would follow its 
application, but should also confess its component 
parts. Thus will every user be duly warned and duly 
armed against surprise and deception. 

Desire to know is the first and basic ingredient. The 
citizen, trustee or contributor who has no question in 
his mind can make no intelligent use of statistics. 
Nor is the statistical method required to tell the party 
affiliations of a mayor, the social connections of a 
trustee, the personal graces of a matron, the mag- 
netism of a school principal or the beauty of a club 
drawing-room. Unfortunately, desire to know essen- 
tials has been used too sparingly in the past. How 
many contributors have wanted to know into what 
different forms of happiness their gifts were trans- 
lated? How many wills have been made by testators 
desiring to know the probable effect of their bounty 



26 Simple Ingredients of Statistics 

upon its recipients? If taxpayers followed more fre- 
quently the disbursement of their taxes to streets and 
schools and social order, there would be more talk 
of the benefits of taxation and less grumbling about 
its burdens. It is when we desire to know more than 
is obvious that the statistical method is indispensable ; 
at last, we are beginning to realise how little that is 
worth while in government, philanthropy or education 
lies on the surface. 

Unit of Inquiry, Count and Comparison are the next 
three ingredients. The search for a unit in business 
and in social work has given a great deal of unneces- 
sary worry, once satirised in a trade journal by stanzas 
beginning as follows : 

A wild-eyed man with a hunted look and a brow all 

seamed with care, 
With shambling feet and palsied hands, and a mop 

of dishevelled hair . . . 
His gaze was fixed on a distant thing, like one who 

gropes for fate, 
With mind distraught and loaded down with some 

oppressive weight. 
"O what is it ails you?" the passersby cried, as they 

saw the wreck forlorn. 
"A unit, a unit, oh, which is the unit?" he muttered 

from early morn. 

"If we get five cents for hauling a crab from Boston's 

quaint old streets 
To 'Frisco town, by the Golden Horn, what are the 

net receipts? 



What Unit Means 27 

How much for coal, for wear and tear, for all the 

trainmen's pay? 
How much dead weight does the engine haul if the 

crab dies on the way?" 

Yet by this time so many units of inquiry have been 
found in railroading that a school commissioner 
recently contrasted the ease of finding the railroad unit 
with the "impossibility" of discovering a unit in school 
administration. He was asked a number of questions. 
"If you are talking of coal purchased (ton), used 
(amount per cubic foot heated) and on hand (ton), 
can you not find the unit; or if you are talking of 
desks supplied and desks lacking, buildings planned 
but not completed, books paid for but unused? If 
there is a unit for all material things purchased by the 
board of education, is there no way of establishing a 
unit of service purchased, the day served or the 
child reached by service? In talking of children who 
play truant, is there not a discoverable one? Or of chil- 
dren who drop out after attending school five weeks 
or of children who are from two to six years behind 
their proper grade, of those who fail to win promo- 
tion, of the number on part time?" So convinced was 
he that there are as many school units as there are 
intelligent questions with regard to school matters 
that he replied : — "I do not believe certain of my col- 
leagues have ever thought of it this way. I am going 
to do my best to secure the adoption of a proper system 
of school records." 



28 Simple Ingredients of Statistics 

The only unit the statistical method knows is the 
unit of inquiry. There is no unit for the man who 
has no inquiry. Much of our worry has come from 
trying to make up lists of units before we listed our 
questions. Not infrequently mental gymnastics have 
proved so agreeable that the unit-maker has given the 
impression of trying to refine and refine until every 
physical object should be reduced to its lowest terms, 
the atom. There is no conceivable circumstance that 
would require one to know the kernels of corn on a cob 
or in a bushel. We are told that the hairs of our heads 
are numbered, but no useful purpose was ever pro- 
posed for that knowledge until too late. If kernel 
and hair have practical importance, the unit is there 
and can be counted. In one walk of life the money 
unit is the cent, elsewhere it is a dime, a dollar or a 
hundred dollar share ; with the Scotchman about to be 
generous it is a farthing, his "bawbee," while with 
a certain swaggering American it is $500 on a golf 
stroke, $50,000 on an election and any part of six 
millions on a matter of personal prestige. The unit 
at quarantine is the passenger ; at the custom-house it 
ought to be baggage, but too frequently is the man 
who does not want the baggage examined. The hos- 
pital unit varies with the question, never meaning a 
mere person, but a person who applies for treatment, 
is treated, cured, improved or discharged unim- 
proved; or again a day or a meal for a pay patient, 
for a free patient or for a part-pay patient. The 



Some Common Place Units 29 

table d'hote unit is a meal; a la carte, dishes 
served. 

One of the first units known to childhood is that em- 
ployed in hide-and-seek ; who has forgotten the burden 
lifted when the unit changed from one to two and 
then to five, each increase hastening the hundred goal 
when eyes might open? The transition from the day 
to the piece as the unit for wages has taught millions, 
whether working in factory, selling books or collect- 
ing bad debts, to reason from question to unit. The 
tourist learns from foreign taverns for the first time 
that there are many units of expense that the land- 
lords must count, and the tourist pay or avoid, — soap, 
candle, bath, room, boots, chambermaid. The Ameri- 
can plan is preferred by the tourist because he does 
not desire to know the details of hotel keeping ; which 
details, however, the landlord fails to count at his 
peril. 

It has been estimated that the average household 
wastes half its provisions ; to save this waste, therefore, 
will give the same result as to increase wages by the 
same amount. Housewives are rarely interested in 
units of expense, although experts have devised a plan 
to identify and keep track of each unit : 



BO Simple Ingredients of Statistics 

















OD 






>> 

P 


do 

2 

d 

CD 
V 

3 


i 


a 

d 

cS 

of 
o 


cS 
3 


(3 

"3 


bo 

g 
13 
© 

5 




JS 

*3 

00 


00 
0> 
t- 
OS 

«M 

P. 


3 




£ 


0> 


02 


H 




d 
o 
W 


a 




1 




















2 




















3 




















4 





















A woman will regard such display of units with dis- 
dain until forced to practise economies or take board- 
ers. Then items take on a new significance. She even 
figures the cost to her of each meal and makes allow- 
ance for breakfast, lunch or dinner taken elsewhere if 
she is notified in advance. She abandons the week as 
a unit in all her own reckoning, even when she humours 
her non-inquiring boarder by conceding the expense 
facts that make up that week. The monthly state- 
ment comes to read: 

Total cost of provisions $61.60 

Total number of meals 220 

Cost per meal 28c. 

Miss J.'s share, 93 meals at 28c. $26.04 
Dr. J.'s share, 87 meals at 28c. 24.36 
Mrs. A.'s share, 40 meals at 28c. 11.20 

$61.60 

If the person were the unit each would pay $20.53. 

Counting, the third ingredient, is the mind's best 
substitute for guessing. We should of course not 



Counting and Comparing 31 

count the same unit more than once in one total. When 
one is not particular and has no question to answer, 
one dispenses with a count and is satisfied with "sev- 
eral," "often," lots," "few," "hardly any," "con- 
siderable," "large." But these words do not mean 
the same to all men in all places, or to the same man 
at all times. "The sometimes of the cautious is the 
often of the sanguine, the always of the empiric, and 
the never of the sceptic; while the numbers 1, 10, 100 
and 10,000 have but one meaning for all mankind." 

Comparing, the fourth ingredient, qualifies the sec- 
ond half of the above sentence. Figures do not "have 
but one meaning" for all mankind at all times. On 
the contrary, they have so many different meanings 
that it is necessary to know what units they count. 
The price $73.98 means little until we know whether 
it paid for a hat, an overcoat or lunch for four. The 
figure 50 may be large or small, according to the 
possibilities in the case, whether we mean 50 thousand 
or 50 million, 50 accidents or 50 oranges, 50 men out 
of 52 or 50 out of 100,000. Were 5,000 Swiss to 
die in one year of tuberculosis, a panic would ensue; 
when only 5,000 die annually of that disease in the 
United States we shall congratulate ourselves on hav- 
ing stamped out the scourge. Boats are large or 
small, swift or slow, according to their background. 
A Roman giant was a pigmy in Gaul. The sign of 
comparison is a mark ( ), the unit we have identi- 
fied and counted going above the line, and the back- 



32 Simple Ingredients of Statistics 

ground with which we compare it going below the 
line: 7/14 means seven compared with fourteen; we 
have gone halfway or removed half the burden; 

What my house cost $25,000 



= a bargain ; 
= swindle ; 



What my house was worth " " $30,000 

Price paid for silver shares _ $100 

Value of shares 

20 in a thousand died this year . _ . ... 

rrr- : n ,.,.■,, — ; : the death rate mdi- 

18 in a thousand died last year 

cates that sanitary precautions are neglected. In a 
word, comparison furnishes the denominator as count- 
ing furnishes the numerator of the statistical fraction ; 
the numerator gives the number of units discovered in 
answer to our question, the denominator gives the total 
number of units with which we compare the units 
counted. 

Things counted and background with which they are 
compared must be the same in .kind; dollars cannot 
be compared with men or bushels, but dollars possessed 
by one man may be compared with dollars held by 
another, price per bushel with price per bushel. Two 
statistical fractions cannot be added or subtracted 
until reduced to a common denominator. 

1/8 and 1/7 are not comparable. 

Their lowest common denominator is 56. 

1/8 = 7/56. 

1/7 = 8/56. 

1/7 is 1/56 greater than 1/8, 



Comparison Too Little Used 33 

The tax rate of town A is $1.85, of town B, $1.75 
for every hundred dollars of assessed valuation. 
If the denominator is assessed valuation, the taxes 
of A are 10 cents higher than of B. But taxes 
come from actual values, not assessed values ; 
property in A is assessed at 3/4 its true value, in 
B at 100%. 

$100,000, assessed at 75%, $75,000 @ $1.85 

= $1,387.50, tax paid. 
$100,000, assessed at 100%, $100,000 @ $1.75 
= $1,750.00, tax paid. 
Whether taxes paid are lower in town A where the 
tax rate is higher, depends upon one other compari- 
son, — taxes paid with what taxes buy in the two 
towns. 

Simple as is comparison, it is too little known in 
published reports and in the discussion of civic and 
charitable matters. To care for 100 patients has not 
the same significance in Chicago as in a village of 
1,000 inhabitants. Achievement is often measured and 
valued by the fact of arriving rather than by dis- 
tance traversed or time consumed. Readers are sup- 
posed to see intuitively the significance of the fact that 
the street-cleaning department spent $352,183 last 
year, and a public bath spent $43,399, or that the 
aggregate attendance of the vacation schools was 
632,196. These figures are in themselves meaning- 
less until compared with the expense and attendance 
of preceding periods, and what is always of greater 
importance, with the least expense and greatest attend- 
ance possible under the circumstances. 



34 Simple Ingredients of Statistics 

Subtraction and Percentages are two other ingredi- 
ents necessary for a proper statistical compound and 
are parts of Comparison. The purpose of comparison 
being to measure difference, gain or loss, progress or 
retrogression, subtraction is indispensable. The state- 
ment that provisions this year cost $31,500 and 
$36,000 last year would be perfectly plain to any one 
who would subtract the former from the latter. Most 
readers will, however, simply say "less" or "much 
less". To make sure that the saving is appreciated, it 
is wise to write out "a difference of $4,500." Because 
many readers do not picture to themselves the fraction 

$4,500 

, it is worth while to perform for them all 

$36,000 * 

the operation of discovering that the saving, $4,500, 
is l%y 2 % of $36,000. One other comparison is 
necessary — namely, provision cost with number of 
people boarded, or more accurately, with meals served. 
If we gave the same number of meals for 12 : (/2% less 
money an economy is obvious. If, however, our 
meals served decreased 25% and our cost only half as 
much, then each meal cost more than last year and 
the apparent showing of economy is changed to pre- 
sumption of extravagance. So that to tell the whole 
lesson we must set side by side not only this year's 
cost and last year's cost, this year's service and last 
year's service, but also the cost per unit (the meal) 
of. service rendered this year with cost per unit of 
service rendered last year. That a meal costs more 



Percentages Are Phonetics of Business 35 

in a small hospital than in a large hospital does not 
prove extravagance; it does raise a doubt as to the 
utility of small hospitals ; which doubt requires a com- 
parison of cost per unit of service rendered with 
measurable result of that service. If one hospital by 
spending $2 per day per patient cures, bone tuber- 
culosis in 300 days, it is cheaper at the price ($600) 
than another that at $1.25 per day per patient will 
never effect a cure, or will require three years 
($1,380). 

Harsh judgment often follows a showing of two 
selected years or months or cases for comparison. 
Great credit was claimed for a "good" officer because 
of the smaller number of criminal cases waiting to be 
tried at the end of 1904 as compared with 1900. Had 
the years 1903 and 1899 been compared, correspond- 
ing credit would have been reflected upon the anti- 
goodness party. To prevent misreading the evidence 
and precipitating some mistaken policy, several suc- 
cessive periods should be compared. 

Percentages are the phonetic spelling of arithmetic. 
In America and in continental Europe every man who 
handles money is accustomed to think in parts of one 
hundred, i.e., percentages. Reports cannot tell their 
story plainly if no use is made of percentages. Givers 
and taxpayers are awed or pleased by meaningless 
totals, which when given their true value — lined up 
according to height — by the percentage method, seem 
trifling or extravagant instead of huge or economical. 



36 Simple Ingredients of Statistics 

So long as statistics has to do with facts of but one 
kind, no other ingredients whatever are necessary un- 
less it be Summary. Columns get too long. It is im- 
possible to carry in the mind totals for 30 or 100 days. 
To learn how many babies under five died from pre- 
ventable disease, no one wants to run over a year's 
records. Readers should not be expected to make 
footings or to select the totals that give the year's 
principal lessons. Somewhere in a report should be 
a birdseye view. 

Sea Breeze: Day $ Stay Parties 1901 1903 1904 1905 

Women and children taken . . 21,604 20,453 21,878 19,452 
Total days— stay and day . . . 42,057 44,688 53,722 53,455 
Total cost $25,381 $28,824 $28,282 $29,881 

This summary clearly illustrates the value of "comparative 
tables" and "proper units of comparison." Comparing persons 
taken to Sea Breeze, we have lost, since 1901, 21,604 minus 
19,452, or 2,152 — 9.9%. But obviously one person staying ten 
days costs more than one person staying one day. Comparing 
days spent at Sea Breeze by persons taken, the work has grown 
from 42,057 to 53,455 days: i.e., 11,396 days, or 27% ; while cost 
has increased $4,500, or 17%. To have done the work of 1905 
at the per capita rate of 1901 would have cost $39,048 instead 
of $29,881. We saved, therefore, the equivalent of $9,167. 
If we had lost in days spent at Sea Breeze instead of gaining 
11,396 days, or $9,167, the fact might have been concealed from 
our contributors by simply failing to present a table based 
upon the "proper unit of comparison" To be still more 
accurate, we should count a person on stay visit as equivalent 
to about three persons staying one day only, for the former 
eats three meals and spends the night. (From the Report of 
the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the 
Poor, 1905.) 



Summaries Prevent Misunderstanding 37 

In the report for 1906, subtraction and percentages 
improved the heading : 



summary: fresh air work 



Numbers Aided 


1902-03 


1904-05 


1905-06 


1905-06 

Compared with 
1904-05 




^In- 
crease 


^De- 
crease 


Sea Breeze Stay Parties 













Where the percentage and difference fail to convey 
the picture of change, a diagram will prove helpful. 
We never outgrow our preference for the block method 
of learning. To add a muscular appreciation to the 
mind's understanding is good pedagogics. This, how- 
ever, is an aid in applying the mixture rather than a 
separate element. 

To be expert in the use of the statistical method of 
securing facts as to any one kind of unit requires, there- 
fore, nothing beyond the reach of the simplest lay in- 
telligence, — desire to know, unit of inquiry, count- 
ing, comparing, subtraction, percentages, summary. 
Such forbidding ingredients as differential calculus, 
logarithms, median, equation of curve of error, 
are no more ingredients of statistics than of 
cathedrals. They are merely technical means, short 



38 Simple Ingredients of Statistics 

cuts to mixing and measuring the other main ingredi- 
ents. They are helps when one is using statistics on 
a large scale. The ordinary citizen will never need to 
use them any more than he will need to make his own 
clothes or melt and alloy his own bullion into coin. 
We do not stop riding over bridges, worshipping in 
cathedrals, visiting museums of art or availing our- 
selves of the benefits of surgical science because we 
have not acquired the technique necessary to bridge, 
cathedral, art and surgery. We demand technique in 
our tailor or dentist or bootmaker. Likewise when 
beyond our depth in counting units of interest we 
should see the importance of calling in men who have 
mastered the technique of statistics on a large scale 
even if they are said to use logarithms and weird 
curves. If one expert is dishonest or dreamy or im- 
practical we engage another; we do not disavow ex- 
pertness, accuracy and "practical." 

But just as soon as our inquiry has to do with more 
than one kind of thing or fact, there is danger of get- 
ting mixed and of counting wrong. Cashiers keep 
nickels and dimes and quarters in separate piles to pre- 
vent giving out the wrong coin in a hurry. It is 
quicker for a newsboy to count his assets, if his penny 
papers and three-cent papers are carefully separated. 
This process, called Classification, is the only hard 
thing about Statistics, the only ingredient it is difficult 
to be sure about. At first glance nothing seems easier 
than keeping things of a kind together, ribbons with 



Classification or Messification 39 

ribbons, shoes with shoes, infants with infants, debts 
with debts, assets with assets, members with members, 
fever cases with other cases of the same fever. But 
people are forever mixing things up in veritable grab 
bags, having a place for everything and everything in 
one place, instead of a place for everything and each 
thing in its own place. Until the contents of Tom 
Sawyer's pocket are laid out and properly posted or 
recorded or packed away, there can be no classification 
and no statistics and no report worth while. We must 
choose messification or classification. 

No reader will find it difficult to name a hundred dif- 
ferent ways in which classification helps him. Have 
you ever thought what torture intelligence would be if 
we had no alphabet and if in one dictionary the letters 
ran c, h, a, o, s, and in the next c, o, n, f, u, s, i, o, n? 
We line soldiers according to height. The days of 
the week are classified, — washing day, ironing day, 
cleaning day, visiting day, prayer-meeting night, 
bath night. What if church was on no regular day and 
at no regular hour ? Passengers are asked to come in at 
the rear door ; to leave by the front door. A surgeon 
recently put carbolic acid in his eye ; he kept it along- 
side of boracic acid. The chief difference between the 
notion store and the department store is that the latter 
keeps laces with laces, soda water at the fountain and 
hardware in the basement instead of all together. The 
chief difference between a "good" clerk and a "poor" 
clerk in a department store is that the latter does not 



40 Simple Ingredients of Statistics 

put things back where they belong before she covers 
the counter with goods of a different kind. We all 
believe "first come, first served." Railroad tickets are. 
classified, — blue for second class, white for first class, 
green for excursion ; the minister once rode on a "char- 
ity ticket" and the President on a pass. The baggage 
check shows whether bicycle, trunk, package was 
shipped and whether fragile or injured. Now postage 
varies with the character of matter mailed; in 1850 it 
was classified as to miles carried. The woodman sorts 
lumber; the grain buyer grades wheat; the business 
directory marks men 1-2-2 or 3-3-3 as they are "good" 
or "bad" pay. The Brooklyn Bridge crush was bar- 
barous until would-be passengers were classified ac- 
cording to destination. Even the Italian mother knows 
that no baby under five months old should be fed 
macaroni and bananas. 

Did you never know a cook who was forever calling 
to waitress and nursemaid and mistress, — "Where's the 
cocoa?" "Do you know where I put the milk?" Did 
you ever try to find your way in Boston's winding 
streets, named after men and events that defy classi- 
fication ; then you love Washington for naming its 
streets after the points of the compass, numbers and 
letters. As a newspaper reader you have learned 
exactly where to find the advertisements and editorials 
or how to avoid them when you choose. Department 
stores would stop their advertisements if surrounded 
by want ads, lost and found and clairvoyant cards. 



Is Disordered Thinking Reputable? 41 

Have you ever thought of the advantage of doctors 
living on one street and of furniture dealers, wholesale 
clothiers, charities and professional men flocking to- 
gether in one building or one district? No one pities 
the man who carries five dollar gold pieces and bright 
pennies loose in the same pocket. 

It is really surprising that people who use classifica- 
tion constantly as a means of keeping out of others' 
way and of avoiding disorder should turn a cold 
shoulder on every proposal to classify their informa- 
tion. Why should disordered thinking be more reput- 
able than disordered housekeeping? To base judg- 
ment as to politics or charity upon stray news items 
or gossip will some day seem as preposterous, yes as 
"untidy" and "queer" as to keep clean and soiled linen 
in one drawer, to plant in one row peas, beans, radish, 
lettuce and pie plant, or sow in one field corn, oats, 
clover, wheat and good resolutions. 

How a fact is to be classified depends upon the use 
one wants to make of information. Books are gen- 
erally classified according to subject. One Philadel- 
phia library still places them according to size. 
Juveniles are being kept by themselves more and more, 
as are technical works, while progressive librarians 
and booksellers keep out all new books to satisfy and 
awaken curiosity and interest. The purpose deter- 
mines whether the basis of classification shall be size, 
subject, age of reader, newness of book, or technique. 
So men may be classified according to age, sex, na- 



42 Simple Ingredients of Statistics 

tionality, occupation, church membership, Greek letter 
affiliation, height or temper, etc. Expenditures are 
classified in numerous ways according to the use to be 
made of the information : 

According to function and year. 1905. 1906. 

For running the home office. 
(Divisions.) 

For salesmen. 
(Listed.) 

For advertising. 
(Mediums.) 

For goods. 
(Kinds.) 
According to months and years. 1905. 1906. 

January to June. 

July to December. 
According to method of payment. 1905. 1906. 

Check. 

Note. 

Cash. 
Eggs classified by months 

according to price and 

kind. Jan. Feb. March. Dec. 

Strictly fresh. 

Fresh. 

Just eggs. 

Schools and colleges have wasted an enormous 
amount of human energy, trying to teach classifica- 
tion through the ear and the mind instead of through 
the eye. Men and women graduate from college who 



Classification Releases Energy of Business 48 

can descant on Descartes and Plato, know reams of 
rhetoric and psychology and philosophy, but cannot 
keep things of a kind together in their bureau drawers 
or in their conversation. They "just dote" on limer- 
icks. Perhaps the time will come when statistics will 
take the place in our curriculum now held by mental 
science. Certain it is that in the practical world classi- 
fication is appreciated as a means of releasing energy 
for business that otherwise would be spent in hunting 
up the tools of business. 

After an article on Everyman a Statistician two pro- 
fessional statisticians remonstrated as follows: — "We 
don't want Everyman a statistician; but we do want 
some millionaire to own statisticians and enable them 
to do statistical work for Everyman. We do want 
Everyman, however, to know that it is worth as much 
to him to have a count of school children as of the 
pigs and telegraph poles of his state." The second 
wrote, — "There is great danger in the assumption that 
Everyman can be a statistician. We will be having all 
sorts of wild guesses." Both writers fall into the 
error that has marked the discussion of popular 
education, — Fear of the little learning. What they 
really mean is, — "We do not want frauds and quacks 
in statistics. Men should not pretend to knowledge or 
power they do not possess." Of course not. Nor 
should they pretend to sing if they cannot, to cure 
consumption or to run an airship. But with statistics 
as elsewhere it is safe and highly desirable that Every- 



44 Simple Ingredients of Statistics 

man use what powers he possesses and that he learn to 
distinguish the genuine from the false. Everyman 
may safely use the statistical method just so far as 
his interests make him responsible for decisions or lead 
him to make assertions of fact. 



IV 

The Business Doctor 

There is a man in New York whose business card 
bears the title D.S.A. He explains that he per- 
forms for business disorders the same service as a medi- 
cal practitioner performs for indigestion or fracture, 
a dentist for toothache, an oculist for astigmatism or 
cross-eyes, an alienist for shattered nerves and dis- 
ordered brain. He uses the physician's method in 
learning what has gone wrong; inspects the business, 
feels the pulse, looks at the eyes, asks about daily rou- 
tine, hunts out disturbing causes and prescribes a 
remedy that will remove, not merely cover up or 
deaden the pain. Sometimes it is necessary to perform 
a surgical operation, such as resetting or amputating 
a bone, trephining where there is pressure on the brain, 
or removing a useless vermiform appendix. This 
Doctor of Sick Accounts is regularly employed by 
many business houses just as is a family physician or 
dentist, to look about from time to time to see if weak- 
ening causes are at work that have beeen overlooked 
by the patient. A rapidly increasing number of busi- 
ness men find it much more profitable to pay a Busi- 
ness Doctor for keeping them well than for curing 
them of grave and neglected maladies. 



46 The Business Doctor 

As mankind came to value physical health, numerous 
preventive measures were adopted, — cleaning streets, 
protecting water sources, quarantine, disinfection, 
certifying milk, letting in fresh air, removing offen- 
sive sights and odours. The physician and the scien- 
tist discovered new truth; the health officer and the 
merchant circulated it. So in business, after science 
and preventive medicine discover principles, legisla- 
tion and commerce can make it both necessary and 
easy to apply them. Fortunately neither business 
health nor professional ethics has forbidden the adver- 
tising of these preventives and cures, whose proofs of 
superiority can be found in every magazine and news- 
paper. Devices may now be purchased for prevent- 
ing "unsanitary" business conditions, for disclosing 
them promptly when they arise, and for removing 
them. The insurance agent in central Kansas can buy 
a desk that provides him with a method of classifying 
and recording his experience, his premiums and his 
obligations, as effective as that used in Boston. The 
careless lawyer can be made "careful to order" if he 
will buy a cabinet and put his papers where cards cry 
aloud for him to put them. The village librarian can buy 
outright the latest method of indexing and managing 
a library in true metropolitan fashion. The country 
editor who is paid in kind can for a trifle get a scheme 
for following up his subscription list. Trade journals 
persuade seller and buyer alike that an interchange of 
experience as to trade methods will be mutually helpful. 



Ingredients of Business Method 47 

It seems to have escaped general attention that the 
ingredients of Business Method are identical with those 
of Statistical Method, — desire to know; unit of in- 
quiry; count; comparison; subtraction; percentages; 
classification; summary. Business Method has an envi- 
able reputation in spite of its resemblance to Statis- 
tical Method because men were earlier and in larger 
numbers interested in trade, and because the beneficent 
results of trade efficiency are almost immediately ap- 
parent. So intent is the business man upon these 
results that he fails to see his inconsistency in extolling 
the Statistical Method in business while denouncing 
every attempt to apply it to civic and social work. 
When official and trustee come to see the essential one- 
ness of Business Method and Statistical Method they 
will find less irksome and more like second nature the 
steps necessary to efficiency in public life, as citizen, 
officer and philanthropist. Most of them will be grati- 
fied to learn that statistics requires no powers which 
they are not supposed to possess and to use daily in 
business and in professional life, and that statistical 
bureau, clearing house, and real estate and title insur- 
ance are of the same set. 

Desire to know is by no means universal among busi- 
ness men. That is probably the reason nine out of 
ten men have failed in the past. The merchant kept 
store, not countable goods. He was the victim or 
beneficiary of his experience, not its student and mas- 
ter. Satisfied if able to support his family, meet his 



48 The Business Doctor 

obligations and make money, he was in the same 
position as the average housewife who has not the 
slightest idea where the money goes or how it is divided 
among different purchases, except that she "is sure 
she does her best" on each day to be "saving" or to get 
a good bargain. In too many large and small enter- 
prises, as in too many homes, large sums are expended 
without any corresponding return in satisfaction to 
the spender. The uninquiring merchant, like the lady 
who prides herself on spending $100,000 a year on 
dress, could learn from the statistical method how to 
double his profits. In fact desire to know is still so 
rare in business that we quite generally attribute the 
forging ahead of our competitor to good luck, in- 
herited traits, monopoly, favourable location or to the 
prejudice, ignorance or sensationalism of customers. 

How long it took the American farmer to learn the 
value of rotating crops ! There still remain farmers 
who sow wheat after wheat and corn after corn on the 
same field and wonder why Providence favours their 
neighbours who follow corn with wheat and wheat with 
clover. The desire to know what constitutes a good 
fertiliser, how it should be used, what it will cost and 
what it will produce is a first step in increasing the 
value of farm land from $25 to $100 an acre. Be- 
cause they know that desire to know, once stimulated, 
will grow and will pay well for facts, progressive 
journalists are selling the farmer answers to questions 
already in his mind and answers to questions that he. 



Unit of Inquiry in Business 49 

should ask regarding his business. The farmer is no 
longer content with the weight of his wallet after 
crops are sold, but asks, — "Would timothy have done 
better than clover? Did the milk separator or wind- 
mill pay? Is the Jersey as all-round serviceable as 
the Hereford? Am I getting as much as my neigh- 
bour per unit of effort expended?" The southern 
farmer is to-day learning for the first time the value 
of supplementing cotton with bees, silkworms, and 
nuts as the northern farmer slowly learned that milk 
and eggs would "pay the grocer." 

The Unit of Inquiry is quickly found when once the 
farmer, storekeeper, grain buyer wishes to explain 
more about his failures and successes than lies on the 
surface. The other processes are in the line of least 
resistance after desire to know takes hold. The man 
who asks questions adds to his strength in competi- 
tion. He may prefer a profit of $15 on each of 50 
carriages ($750) rather than $25 for each of ten car- 
riages ($250). The value of an inventory may have 
been suggested to him by the suspicious acts of an 
employee or by an item in a trade journal. Counting 
of stock on hand shows that year after year certain 
articles have been accumulating with practically no 
sales, that other goods have disappeared with no return 
to proprietor, or that show-window samples, top-pieces 
of lumber, etc., will bring little if anything. Hence- 
forth samples and top-pieces are sold before too late. 
Goods hidden away, rusted or out-of-date are cleared 



50 The Business Doctor 

out and future congestion prevented. Because com- 
petition kills profit, four grain dealers make a "gentle- 
man's agreement," — one of the first effective Ameri- 
can trusts — to divide the field, and to fix the price of 
grain. An accurate account of quantity purchased 
and price paid becomes necessary. Personal must be 
separated from business expenses. In order to keep 
the agreement the druggist, the grocer and the hard- 
ware man must separate grain expenses from store 
expenses. The principle is soon profitably applied to 
the wagon department, tinware department, ready- 
made clothing. Lessons learned inspire new inquiries, 
last year's mistakes are studied, and the first condition 
of efficiency exists. 

The memory or a slip of paper no longer suffices to 
answer questions as to goods bought, time of arrival, 
goods sold, cash deposited, bills payable, debts due. 
An engagement or "date" book is kept. To put debits 
and credits in different columns but on the same page 
saves an enormous amount of time for dealer and 
debtor, and avoids disputes that are expensive from 
the standpoint of both. A monthly balancing serves 
notice of too much trust to one customer, or too tardy 
payment of bills. The saving of three, five or 10% 
from discounts for cash or for payment within 30 days 
proves to be a large item and justifies necessary 
vigilance and temporary sacrifice. 

It becomes important to know not only whether the 
business as a whole is profitable, but whether each 



Examples of Unhealthy Business 51 

salesman is a good investment. To prevent lapse of 
memory on the part of salesmen a cash register is in- 
troduced. Sales are totaled and compared; A is dis- 
missed in the hope of obtaining another salesman who 
will do as good work as B, or perhaps A's salary is in- 
creased because his work puts him in a class with B. 
This classification is readily applicable to months or 
to seasons of the year, or to hours of the day. I recall 
one country business where the night trade was 
slighted until it changed hands. Then the new owners, 
wishing to know whether or not to keep open at night, 
discovered that the profits on their night sales more 
than paid all fixed expenses for the entire business. 

Not infrequently a housewife takes boarders at $5 or 
$10 a week to increase family income. The head of 
the family wonders just why it is that the drain upon 
his income is not relieved by these receipts. Answer: 
If he will look about him, he will probably find that the 
boarder's money is going into bric-a-brac, better 
clothes and other means of raising the standard of 
living. He may even find that the extras lavished by 
his good wife on her favoured boarders exceed the 
returns from her hospitality. 

A club of western students was happy in the fact 
that it was providing satisfactory board for $1.13 a, 
week. After a month of hallucination this figure 
jumped to $4 a week with no corresponding change in 
diet. It was then discovered that in the earlier weeks 
provisions bought but not paid for were not included. 



52 The Business Doctor 

At another university the Faculty (Hub found its ex- 
penses and its debt gradually mounting. A new com- 
mittee was appointed, headed by a statistician who 
asked a number of questions and showed the steward 
exactly how these questions could be answered. If 200 
oranges were purchased and 65 used for dinner, an 
inventory at night should show a balance of 135 
oranges. The steward did not realise that a simple 
little system of answers prepared for him to fill out 
each day would tell at the end of a fortnight the sad 
truth that he and his friends were disposing of from 
25 to 40% of the supplies purchased. 

This line of development you will observe is con- 
stantly in the direction of what is known in the busi- 
ness world as control, that is, mastery of the situa- 
tion because of knowledge regarding it. As soon as 
business becomes complex memory is an unsafe guide, 
and classification becomes more and more necessary. 
Monopoly of information preceded and later accom- 
panied trust evils; just as dissemination of facts has 
proved the most effective means of checking their 
excesses. Things which in the abstract have no inter- 
est become invaluable when profit is to be made from 
knowledge or penalty follows ignorance. When a fire 
burns the records or a trusted clerk leaves, the pro- 
prietor sees for the first time the value of a fire-proof 
safe and of a method of bookkeeping independent of 
him who makes a sale and carries the details in his 
memory. Grain buyers are told that they may have 



Classification in Business 53 

profit from the tare. Immediately they find more tare 
than ever before. The farmer, the victim of many 
such jokes, is robbed, but as an incidental benefit 
to the grain trade a method of bookkeeping is intro- 
duced that distinguishes clearly the tare from the 
wheat. Furthermore the farmer himself learns to 
count his own tare and weigh his own grain and wagon 
before going to town. Very much the same evolution 
is now beginning toward control by public intelli- 
gence of banks and of trust and insurance companies. 
Perhaps if the valuable lessons the business world is 
learning from business dishonour were realised, fewer 
looters would consider suicide or expatriation their 
only refuge. 

Losses are no longer charged against the business as , 
a whole, but fcrrctted out and charged against the 
particular department where the waste or bad judg- 
ment exists. Profits are no longer blindly credited to 
the business as a whole, but rather to those particular 
departments that earn them. Having discovered profit 
in putting debit and credit where they could be seen at 
a glance, of having monthly balances, of using cheque 
books and bank books, of journal entries, the business 
man comes to realise that similar debits and credits, 
journal entries and cheques may be applied to goods. 
He sees that the stock-pile tells more stories than the 
customer. Neckties have individuality as distinct from 
shoes, as has John Doc from John Smith. While it 
is not worth while to tabulate the first names of cus- 



54 The Business Doctor 

tomers, it may be worth while to tabulate the streets 
on which they live. It is not worth while to keep track 
of the sales by the % hours, but it may be profitable 
to know the sales by months or weeks. He may not 
care to know where his salesmen live, whether they are 
married and how they vote, but he should know where 
they are during business hours or when on the road. 
He does not care to record the colour of goods or the 
shape of the packages in which they arrive, but he 
needs to know whether they remain unsold, whether 
they become shop-worn, whether they are. wasted. 
Ideas, like wagons, must be classified and valued. Un- 
less the business man is a gambler and acts with no 
reference to laws of trade, he r /ust apply the statisti- 
cal method in deciding whether to enlarge his business 
or to add a new line, whether it pays to run full capac- 
ity all the time. If he advertises, he will keep count of 
returns, using key words or numbers to see which 
magazines and newspapers pay, and will note the re- 
turn from different types of advertisement in different 
seasons. 

The book trade has suffered several failures that 
speak eloquently of the need for business doctors and 
statistical method. Firms that are household words, 
in time of apparent prosperity, went into bankruptcy 
because their managers had been satisfied with un- 
classified totals, desiring to know too little regarding 
their own experience. They advertised books that 
could not be sold, slighted others they could have 



Unhealthy Insurance Business 55 

sold. They failed to distinguish magazine receipts 
from those on fiction, encyclopedias and technical 
works. They had no means of telling the value of an 
author's name ; circularised the wrong audience ; spent 
money advertising in the wrong journals ; failed to dis- 
cover the life of a book or the best season for pushing 
it. Now all this is changing. An illustration of the 
kind of thing it is necessary for publishers to know is 
found in the action of Charities and Commons, when 
asked recently to consider adding a new feature to its 
work, namely, special articles, news items, etc., bear- 
ing on the physical welfare of school children. The 
publication committee believed thoroughly that 
propaganda was necessary and desired to take up the 
campaign. The business management prepared a 
statement showing exactly what it would cost in time, 
in paper used, how much for composition, publishing 
and mailing. Failure to secure this information would 
have forced the publication into one of two positions : 
(1) advertising a program that it was financially un- 
able to carry out; (2) curtailing established depart- 
ments. 

The life insurance business occupied the centre of the 
stage for nearly two years, offering conclusive evi- 
dence that an uninformed public is sure prey for 
looters. Incidentally it altered greatly the public's 
veneration of Success. Cancer was disclosed by "best 
men" who felt that the favours and penalties of plun- 
der were being unequally distributed. Some favoured 



56 The Business Doctor 

the incantations of medicine men, others wanted oste- 
opathy, while another who has already paid a price 
similar to Colonel Waring's for sanitary zeal, con- 
vinced the public that there "was need of the advice 
and probably of the knife of the trained surgeon." 
What then was this disease? Too many directors had 
cared to know little more regarding their experience 
than enough to keep profits flowing into their own 
pockets and themselves out of jail. When finally re- 
organised, their accounts will show not "good" men as 
directors, for these will be at a discount in the insur- 
ance business. No real conversion is possible until 
the directors arm themselves and the public with facts 
as to districts and agents, profits from various kinds 
of risk and investment, reason for lapses, administra- 
tion expenses, campaign presents, premiums. 

No better illustration can be given either of business 
made efficient because of statistics or failing because 
of their want than railroading. Millions of dollars 
have been squandered in this country because mana- 
gers of railroads learned nothing from their own 
experience or that of others. To-day the presidents 
of our great railways can tell at a glance, from a sum- 
mary always up to date, exactly what was the expense 
of a thousand miles of line every month during the 
last two years. They find that it is as important to 
know what community is shipping fewer goods this 
year than last, as does the ward leader to know what 
voters have not turned out by four o'clock. It is not 



From Auditor- to Business Doctor 57 

from sentiment, it is not to save lives, but to save 
millions of dollars, that railroads employ a train 
despatcher who can locate trains at any moment. It 
is not from sentiment, but from economy, that may be 
readily computed in dollars and cents that a block sys- 
tem of signals is substituted for the flagman, that 
water troughs between tracks along the line take the 
place of windmills, that mechanical devices plus man's 
brain are constantly taking the place of man's hands. 
Railroad abuses continue to exist partly because 
dummy directors do not have access to the presidents' 
vest-pocket summaries, and partly because the presi- 
dents themselves are more interested in railroad growth 
than in railroad efficiency. 

Gradually the auditor who verifies totals and certi- 
fies that debit and credit sides foot up the same is 
either giving way to or himself becoming a business 
doctor, with the name expert accountant. If few 
members of this profession have heretofore developed 
fresh air, more light methods, it is because their 
clients have wanted to know too little, have valued busi- 
ness health too cheaply. This much we know to-day 
that if you can tell the doctor what you want to know 
about your business, or if you will permit him to tell 
you how your kind of business ought to act and ap- 
pear, he can devise a plan that will automatically 
bring this knowledge to you daily, weekly, monthly or 
annually. The Business Doctor must of course be en- 
couraged to tell the truth, not to call consumption 



58 The Business Doctor 

malaria, or alcoholism and Saint Vitus dance nervous- 
ness. Many physicians unprof essionally give patients 
what robs of vitality while promising relief. With 
D.S.A.'s, as with M.D.'s, the title in itself is no proof 
of either ability or integrity. Courses of training 
have not yet been developed, even with the aid of state 
examinations, that will insure the patient against 
quacks and faith cures, willing to confuse current in- 
come and legacies, capital investment and current ex- 
pense in order to give the appearance of sound health. 
In every section of the country "good" work is ham- 
pered for want of funds, death rates refuse to fall, 
officers disappoint their reform friends, business ven- 
tures fail. There is a reason. That reason can be 
found and removed unless a mortal disease is at work 
requiring the body to die. Wherever disturbing condi- 
tions exist the Business Doctor should be consulted. 
If you do not know any such, the New York School 
of Philanthropy will send a list ; methods of systema- 
tising business are advertised in almost all magazines. 
When not practicable to ask an outside expert to pass 
upon the health of a business, a city department or a 
charitable society, it is worth while to make some one 
insider responsible for studying health problems. At 
least it is feasible for the proprietor, mayor, president 
or treasurer to set apart a portion of his time in which 
to gain special knowledge of weak and strong points. 
No man's responsibility is too small to benefit from see- 
ing himself as others would see him. If you have 



Some Business Doctors Are Quacks 59 

occasion to advise friends responsible for the efficiency 
and health of a factory, hospital, school or church, 
no better counsel can be given than that of the New 
York Board of Health to mothers of sick babies, — 
"Send for a doctor at once. If you cannot pay for a 
doctor, take the baby to the nearest dispensary. The 
rooms should be free from garbage and clean. Re- 
move soiled pieces of carpet and unnecessary clothing 
and furniture. Don't feed the baby coffee, tea, beer 
or any liquor." 



The State as Doctor 

An illuminating proof of the superiority of the ef- 
ficiency test over the goodness test is afforded by man's 
effort to check disease and to promote health. For 
centuries Christian nations, like their pagan fore- 
runners, attributed pestilence to Heaven, — a penalty 
for sin and a reminder of Omnipotence. How ineffec- 
tual was the goodness remedy is strikingly shown by a 
painting in the Liverpool gallery entitled "The Plague." 
A mediaeval village lined with picturesque houses, 
such as tourists seek in Chester, Oxford and parts of 
London, is strewn with the dead and dying. Bloated, 
spotted faces look into the eyes of ghouls as lace and 
jewelry are torn from bodies not yet cold. In the 
foreground a muscular giant, paragon of conscious 
virtue, clad like John the Baptist and Bible in hand, 
strides among his plague-stricken fellow-townsmen, 
urging them to turn from their sins. Ghouls and 
Black Death move on to the next victim. Modern 
efficiency desires to know of the first outbreak of the 
plague, isolates the patient, thoroughly cleanses or de- 
stroys, if necessary, all infected clothing, bedding, 
floors and walls, and makes it possible for the thou- 
sands not stricken to go on living for each other with 



From Pestilence to Fact 61 

a better chance of bringing forth deeds meet for re- 
pentance. 

In no field of human effort have efficiency tests ac- 
complished such wonders as in that of State Medicine ; 
nowhere else is the statistical method held in such high 
esteem. The triumphs of sanitary reform, which 
Lecky considered the brightest page in the history of 
the nineteenth century, were due not so much to an in- 
creased valuation on life as to increased knowledge of 
conditions detrimental to health. Without any change 
in the fundamental law of nuisances, — So use what 
you own that you shall not injure another — the num- 
ber of acts which the law will prevent has multiplied 
a hundred-fold as man has read his experience, 
counted, compared, classified and summarised facts 
regarding the causes of sickness and death. More 
men are to-day giving their undivided attention to 
the detection and elimination of disease centres in New 
York City alone than were concerned with the health 
of the civilised world a century ago. The seven suc- 
cessive steps by which Pestilence and Calamity have 
been put under check and made unnecessary by Fact 
indicate both the every-day tests and the motives upon 
which depends the promotion of health and of justice 
and opportunity. Seven characteristic catch-words 
may prove helpful to those wishing to learn the needs 
of their own community so as to secure legislation or 
to earn public support in meeting those needs. 

Instinct was the first sanitarian or tribe doctor. By 



62 The State as Doctor 

the distribution of plant life, of heat and moisture the 
nomad was forced to enjoy pure air, pure water and 
pure soil. In his conflict with nature he learned to 
shun certain plants as poisonous, as well as to reject 
discoloured water and offensive foods. Physical laws 
fast became moral principles enforced by religious 
sanction. How costly the early lessons must have been 
is shown by the death penalties inflicted for poisoning 
water sources and food supplies, and by the stringent 
rules regulating burials, intermarriage, the use of 
swine flesh, etc. 

Impulse still prompts too many educated men and 
women to sanitary precautions and to philanthropy. 
The sidewalk across the street was icy ; a well-dressed 
woman came from a basement and tumbled down at 
the feet of a professional beggar. Had he met her 
before she fell he would have drawn a long face, said 
he was starving and asked for a penny. She would 
have recoiled from instinct, and perhaps sent him 
across the street to the United Charities Building. 
But after she fell Ee forgot for a time his own spurious 
distress and gave her a look of sympathy, for which 
she was instinctively grateful. Seeing his opportunity, 
he asked for help like a man, and she parted not only 
with a coin, but with an apple and banana that she 
happened to have in a bag. 

"One touch of sorrow makes the whole world kin." 

Comfort and (Esthetics forced Rome to pave streets, 



Comfort and Commercial Sanitation 63 

and to install aqueducts, sewers and public baths. 
This somewhat crude motive that flooded the streets of 
Rome with water is also accountable for cleaning the 
avenues of the wealthy in modern cities three times as 
often as the congested, narrow, sweltering, disease- 
reeking alleys. As Greece worshipped Hygeia, the god- 
dess of physical perfection and beauty, so Rome and 
Carthage were primarily interested in gratifying the 
taste of their wealthy few for cleanliness compatible 
with ease and show. Water works, sewers and pave- 
ments, now as then, cater not only to advanced 
standards of comfort and of aesthetic sensitiveness, but 
"partly," as a Roman writer suggested, to the health 
of poor and rich alike. 

Commerce was a conscious and a rebellious sufferer 
from the mediaeval theory of the divine origin of dis- 
ease. Passive resistance did not prevent scourges in 
a.d. 550, 1000, 1345-56, 1485, 1528, 1665, 
that numbered victims by thousands, even millions. A 
ship sent to the Orient for precious goods would re- 
turn with the plague, death and financial ruin. Mo- 
nastic institutions, centres of mediaeval intelligence 
and goodness, were not able to help, for they made it 
their business to preach submission to pestilence and to 
practise what they preached. By an interesting coin- 
cidence the foremost maritime city, Venice, and the 
foremost guild town, Cologne, began in the same year, 
1348, a reaction against everlasting filth, the one by 
quarantine of maritime traffic, the other by systematic 



64 The State as Doctor 

cleaning of streets. Similarly, commercial motives 
started the first board of health in the United States. 
The merchant, not the doctor, demands good roads 
and passable streets for our country towns. Mer- 
chants may be easily taught that the efficiency of their 
city in promoting health adds to the purchasing power 
of their customers and to the demand for their goods. 
Likewise every physician but a quack can be made to 
see that healthy patients are able to pay larger fees 
than those who, because in constant need of repair, 
never know the joy and the profit of vitality. 
I Anti-nuisance motives for efficient health work dif- 
fer from the instinct, comfort, commerce motives not 
so much in kind as in complexity of causes. Whereas 
in the three early stages the group in control of a 
tribe, a city or principality took steps to protect or 
please the governing few, the nuisance code has been 
from the first designed to protect one individual 
against annoyance or harm on account of the acts or 
premises of another. Where all men do the same thing, 
the law takes no notice of nuisances unless they do 
physical violence to person or property. In towns 
where every thrifty householder keeps a cow, a horse, 
and a pig to consume the surplus from his own table, 
stables and piggeries are not nuisances. On the con- 
trary they proudly front the street to advertise the 
prosperity of their owners. But when, later, the lead- 
ing merchant, the teacher, preacher and physician re- 
move their stables to the rear of the lot, all stables on 



Anti- Nuisance and Anti-Slum Sanitation 65 

the street become a nuisance to them. Thanks to ris- 
ing standards of living and to scientific discoveries, 
the stratification — one might almost say streetifi- 
cation — of society has extended the two or three medi- 
aeval nuisances, until our present list of acts, prop- 
erties and enterprises that are nuisances and injurious 
to health fills hundreds of pages. The law gives to 
every citizen the right to make complaint, and if he 
can prove that a neighbour is injuring his health he 
can secure abatement. Unfortunately the standard of 
living of the greater part of our population is still 
so low that only the few protest against the nuisances 
co-existent with a low standard of vitality. 

Anti-slum interest cannot exist where there is no 
geographical division between the clean and the un- 
clean, the infected and the non-infected, orderly and 
the disorderly, high and low vitality. The danger 
must be definitely located, — a cloud visible on the hori- 
zon. There can obviously be no anti-slum feeling 
against one's equals. Louis the Grand and Queen Bess 
lived next door to filth that to-day would be regarded 
as a nuisance and a menace by the humblest slum deni- 
zens of New York. Yet so far have tastes developed 
with knowledge of danger that the wealthy few in that 
city are running away as fast and as far as possible 
from the annoyance and danger of contact with the 
slum. A great part of the health code is designed to 
protect those of high income against disease incident 
to low income ; high vitality against low vitality ; the 



66 The State as Doctor 

mansion with rooms to spare against the congested 
hovel. The ideal slum is that of the earlier days in 
Paris and Berlin, where the very poor lived in the gar- 
ret or cellar in the same building with the well-to-do ; 
the latter thus having daily warning of their own in- 
terest in the health of their less fortunate neighbours. 
With the aid of the press, well-managed charitable 
agencies do their best to prevent uptown's forgetting 
its nearness to downtown. Oft-repeated stories of 
poverty and preventable disease make it incumbent on 
uptown, for its own peace of mind, to indulge its im- 
pulse to help, — to buy the comfort of silence by gift 
of money to a private society or of taxes and power to 
a health board for the sake of keeping the slum, its 
evils, and its dangerous depressing pictures out of 
sight, out of hearing, out of mind. Similar publicity 
furnishes the small town and the country with anti- 
slum motives for demanding that cities abolish their 
slums. 

Pro-slum interest follows close upon anti-slum 
thought and action. The impulse to help the 
under dog is human. No criminal is too atrocious to 
receive gifts of violets and bonbons from sweet girls 
and good women when newspapers make him an object 
of general aversion. As in the first stage a broken leg, 
a bandaged arm or a wail incites the animal impulse to 
help, so the word slum comes to stand for a huge cloud, 
a district, a type of suffering that instinctively awak- 
ens a desire to help. Health and philanthropic meas- 



Pro- Slum and Religious Sanitation 67 

ures are no longer taken by uptown against the slum 
in the interest of uptown, but for the slum in the inter- 
est of the slum. 

Religion in its highest sense marks the seventh and 
final stage, when health measures express on one 
hand the right of the slum for its own sake to health 
and to opportunity, and on the other hand the duty 
of all men belonging to the same environment to give 
their share of thought and property necessary to in- 
sure such health and opportunity. Pure milk is de- 
manded not to afford either protection or Lady Boun- 
tiful motives to the well-to-do, but because every baby 
born has a right to milk that will give, not take, life. 
Fevers are controlled not to avoid infection of the 
rich, not to prevent commercial loss, not to contribute 
to the peace of mind of uptown, but because poor as 
well as rich have a right to protection against prevent- 
able disease. 

The highest degree of efficiency in promoting health 
is found where this seventh stage is reached. Not all 
communities have arrived; nor have all men. Man's 
chief guide from stage to stage has until recently been 
Pestilence and Calamity. So helpful is the vivid im- 
pression made by a large number of persons dying in 
the same place at one time, of the same cause, that 
world-famed sanitarians, not skilled in the use of the 
statistical method of massing facts, frequently lament 
the passing of the old-time smallpox epidemic, "lest 
we forget." The first board of health in Pennsyl- 



68 



The State as Doctor 



vania followed the yellow fever outbreak in 1794 ; its 
state board of health was the product of a typhoid 
epidemic (1885), and the more recent attempt (1906) 
to secure efficiency by means of adequate support and 
re-organisation followed two epidemics of smallpox 







FI 



Tfl 



ate 

ras 
alt 
for 
or- 
Iflc 
M 



THE SHAME OP S0EANT0N. 

The heroic efforts of the Scranton authorities 
to check the epidemic of typhoid in that city 
would deserve more praise if a modicum of the 
present energy had been directed in the first place 
to the prevention of infection. 

A polluted water supply in a modern city hav- 
ing all the resources of sanitary science at its 



and typhoid. The time will never come when ten 
deaths will cut as deep a groove in the brain of the 
selfish or indifferent neighbour as one thousand deaths, 
when headlines like above fail to agitate the 



or 



Where Facts Make True Impression 69 

mind. But for those communities and individuals who 
have reached the stage where obligation to promote 
health is measured by man's right as man to healthful 
occupation and healthful home surroundings the reit- 
eration of facts as to preventable disease and its 
causes is an effectual substitute for catastrophe and a 
sufficient stimulus to efficient health administration. 

In two important fields, facts have recently served no- 
tice that Catastrophe's leadership must decline. I 
refer to the organisation of national committees 
for the prevention of tuberculosis and for the protec- 
tion of the workingman's child. These committees 
have nearly all the advantages of Catastrophe — they 
mass their evidence — and have in addition vast su- 
periority in point of constancy. You see, a speaker 
in Alabama is armed with the figures for the entire 
country and with all the momentum of an organisa- 
tion having members in every city and state. Like- 
wise the lecturer on tuberculosis stops counting the 
losses in Baltimore or Illinois and holds up the appall- 
ing sacrifice of men and women in all states due to 
the preventable and curable disease — tuberculosis. 
Instead of waiting for a fire or tornado or deluge or 
collision, they artificially produce the same startling, 
convincing result by turning on the light of a nation's 
experience. If the protectionists were so foolish as to 
approach Nebraska farmers with the statistics of their 
own counties unadulterated by the interest of eastern 
industrial states, they would without doubt lose Ne- 
braska's electoral vote. 



70 The State as Doctor 

The successful methods of the most efficient sani- 
tarian are applicable by the average layman and aver- 
age physician to the simplest village or rural condi- 
tions. Whether your community has taken one or all 
of these necessary steps is a matter of fact and may 
be determined by taking your desire to know to the 
reports of work done by its department of health. 
Sanitary codes reflect not steps taken but ideals de- 
fined. Efficiency is made of more permanent and 
sterner stuff, and is impossible unless the ingredients 
of the statistical remedy are used for each of the 
following essential steps : 

1. Notification of danger when first it is recognised 

by whomever recognised. 
£. Registration at a central office of facts as to 

each dangerous thing or person. 

3. Examination of the seat of danger to discover its 

extent, its cost and new seats of danger created 
by it. 

4. Isolation of the dangerous thing or person. 

5. Constant attention to prevent extension to other 

persons or things. 

6. Destruction or removal of disease germs or other 

causes of danger. 

7. Analysis and record, for future use, of lessons 

learned by experience. 

8. Education of the public to understand its rela- 

tion to danger checked or removed, its responsi- 
bility for preventing a recurrence of the same 
danger and the importance of promptly recog- 
nising and checking similar danger elsewhere. 



Triumphs of State Medicine 71 

The prompt execution of these steps has added 
twenty years to the average life ; has decreased infant 
mortality from one in two to one in seven or ten ; has 
made smallpox less frequent and less virulent than 
measles ; has recently delivered Havana and New 
Orleans from yellow fever, as earlier it banished that 
scourge from New York and Philadelphia and other 
scourges from the populous centres of northern Eu- 
rope; has proved the possibility of wiping out con- 
sumption. Neglect to take these steps caused the 
death of more soldiers in our Civil War than were 
killed by bullets and sabres. The military indorse- 
ment of these simple principles reduced Japan's loss 
from disease in her war with Russia to one for every 
fourteen killed or disabled in battle, a record that 
causes us to blush for that of the United States in her 
war with Spain. Finally the civilised world has been 
educated to reject the divine origin of transmissible 
diseases, to attribute death from such diseases to 
official neglect and to expect health officials to point 
the way to their complete extirpation. 

Such achievement would have been impossible had 
sanitarians not counted, compared, classified, sum- 
marised, before they talked. 

Laymen themselves can readily learn all they need to 
know in order to ask intelligent questions about health 
administration. But the superstition must be out- 
grown that words like healthy, sick, disease, inspection 
mean anything in particular. They must keep scarlet 



72 The State as Doctor 

fever in a different pocket from mumps, separating 
babies from school children, children from adults, July 
from January, arrests from fines, codes from perform- 
ance. They must not be taken in by numerators alone, 
but should demand the denominator: 

babies died 

or 



babies died who might have died ' 

babies that might have been saved babies sick 

or 



babies died babies living 

Weekly death rates mean nothing, for they do not 
show "the long run." Many health statements are 
given out in the optimistic spirit of a little girl who at 
8 a.m. interrupted her swing on the gate and her 
violent joy, — "I have been a good girl all day." 
There are a number of precautions that experts need 
take that taxpayers can learn by studying New- 
sholme's Vital Statistics, For practical purposes 
it is enough to ask health officers for results and to 
insist upon comparative tables, percentages, sum- 
maries, diagrammatic statements and reports that in- 
terpret in an interesting way their story. 

Theoretical opposition to each forward move has been 
made by advocates of individual freedom and de- 
fenders of the Constitution. Facts answer through 
Huxley , — "If my neighbour's drains create a poison- 
ous atmosphere which I breathe at the risk of diph- 
theria, he risks my freedom to live just as much as if 




HERMANN M. BIGGS, M.D. 

As medical officer of health for New York City Dr. Biggs 
secured the compulsory notification of cases of tuberculosis, a 
form of efficient publicity that was bitterly condemned, but 
quickly imitated. More recently he has declared that the 
thorough physical examination of school children will surpass 
in results all previous sanitary reforms. 



State Interference Justified 73 

he went about with a pistol threatening my 'life." 
Spencer said that state prevention of unsanitary con- 
ditions would prevent the survival of the fittest ; facts 
answer that the tests of fitness under healthful condi- 
tions are more vigorous and more numerous than 
where filth and preventable disease abound. Dr. Her- 
mann M. Biggs was declared a revolutionist for intro- 
ducing compulsory notification of tuberculosis in New 
York City; facts have proved him a statesman, — 
saviour of thousands of lives and the most effective 
enemy of the white plague. So well have health facts 
been marshalled that the law of civilised countries en- 
joins health officers to use force, if necessary, to pro- 
tect our neighbours against our carelessness or mis- 
fortune. It will protect us even against our will, mak- 
ing free with our persons by removal to hospital, by 
quarantine, vaccination, visiting our homes at any 
hour of the day or night, examining our children for 
physical defects. It makes free with our property, 
orders repairs of buildings, places restrictions on new 
buildings, condemns houses that are unfit for human 
habitation, destroys impure milk, prevents child la- 
bour, refuses work certificates if children are physi- 
cally unfit, compels use of hard coal instead of soft 
coal, inspects food, supervises the sale of milk and the 
preparation of meats and takes taxes to conduct free 
clinics and hospitals. The only defence for these 
autocratic powers is, — Facts prove them beneficial to 
society as a whole; they save vastly more than they 



74 The State as Doctor 

cost ; cities that exercise these powers are more health- 
ful and prosperous than before they exercised them. 

Without the discovery of another germ or germicide, 
without another legal definition of nuisance or of 
interference with health, our present code if efficiently 
administered could effect the practical elimination of 
transmissible disease. The supreme need is for the 
constant application of knowledge and powers already 
possessed to conditions in every part of the land, farm- 
yard as well as city, by every responsible adminstrative 
unit, township, city, county, state, nation. As the 
interests to be protected have gone beyond any one 
class, so the remedies to be applied are beyond the gift 
of any one class. Because administration cannot rise 
above a community's appreciation of its benefits, the 
enlightened interest of law}^er and magistrate, teacher, 
capitalist and day labourer is quite as essential to sani- 
tary progress as the technique of physician, chemist 
and bacteriologist. Experts, officials and employers 
may be depended upon to ask the right questions, to 
keep proper records and to render efficient service in 
promoting health, if laymen ask the right questions: 

As to Yourself 

Do you know what your city, county, state and 
nation pretend to do for health protection? 

Do you ever read health reports ? 

Do you know the responsible health officers? 

Have you thought that preventable disease in your 
neighbourhood affected your comfort, your 
health, your income and its purchasing power? 



The Layman s Responsibility 75 

Do you understand how germ diseases are trans- 
mitted and why they are eradicable? 

Have you counted the cost to your community of 
the following common diseases that are unneces- 
sary and preventable: Scarlet fever, typhoid, 
measles, whooping cough, smallpox, tuberculosis, 
grip, diphtheria, yellow fever? 

Are you in the habit of estimating the happiness 
and misery of your community by the increase or 
decrease in its death rate from preventable causes ? 

Do you know the districts where preventable diseases 
are most active ? 

Does your local health officer regard himself as a 
statesman responsible for improving vitality in 
your community or as a mere pill mixer and 
scavenger? Can he compile and interpret sta- 
tistics? Can he make a "life table"? 

Have you ever made known your interest in public 
health to your neighbours and to the health 
officer? 

As to the Health Program 

Are you getting your money's worth from the na- 
tional government so long as "thousands are ex- 
pended in stamping out cholera among swine, but 
not one dollar was ever voted for eradicating 
pneumonia among human beings"? Will you 
help secure a National Board of Health? 

Do otherwise reputable physicians oppose the health 
department on the ground that it interferes with 
their profits? 

Does your city pretend to control and prevent in- 
fection ? 

Are employes so classified as to show that the exec- 



76 The State as Doctor 

utive officer clearly understands how to work out 
the program? 

Does the county inspect sources of water and milk? 

Are city and county protected against one another's 
neglect by state inspection of water and milk 
sources, and by state intervention to prevent 
nuisance, to provide quarantine, etc., when towns 
and cities are neglectful? 

Does the state make known throughout its limits 
the facts as to disease centres, comparing town 
with town, disease with disease, this year with last 
year? 

Are local and state health boards adequately sup- 
ported ? 

As to Health Reports 

Are they weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, or 

never ? 
Are they interesting as well as intelligible ? 
Are they generally circulated? Do newspapers 

quote and interpret? 
Are comparative tables and percentages used to 

show whether preventable diseases are checked or 

neglected ? 
Are charts and diagrams used, comparing district 

with district? 
Are changes interpreted and causes sought? 
Is work not done clearly shown? 
Are taxpayers' interest and duty emphasised? 

As to Your Own District 

Where are the centres of infection? 

How many cases of sickness? 

How many deaths? 

Are conditions better or worse than last year? 



Asking Questions But a First Step 77 

Where are the chronic nuisances, unclean streets, 
overcrowded tenements ? 

How many babies died because of impure milk? 

How often were milk shops visited ; how many quarts 
were destroyed ; how many samples were taken for 
analysis as to presence of disease germs ; how 
many dealers were arrested; were they fined, im- 
prisoned or acquitted; what fines were imposed? 

Did inspections increase as temperature and danger 
rose ? 

Did your district get its share of inspectors and of 
attention from the Department? 

Were houses disinfected after infection? Promptly 
or tardily? 

Were infected children promptly detected and ex- 
cluded from school? 

Asking questions is but the first step toward efficiency. 
Obviously, if one goes no farther he will be utterly 
inefficient in promoting health, although possibly 
quite proficient as a sociologist or pedagogue. It 
just happens, however, that communities that aslc 
questions of health officers are well protected. There 
seems to be something about that first step, a question 
as to health, that impels officer and public alike to 
make efficient use of the answer. Few people in deal- 
ing with life and death dare to be indifferent or sloth- 
ful, if standing under an arc light. 

The various efficiency steps are being newly taken by 
New York City in the interest of physically defective 
school children. For years a hurried inspection of 
pupils by physicians has cut down greatlj sickness 



78 The State as Doctor 

and absence because of trachoma and so-called chil- 
dren's diseases. Two years ago a thorough examina- 
tion of a few hundred children was made as to points 
on the following facsimile card: 




/#£ £ ft 8 £ fcfcfc gtf fc 




The New York Physical Record Card 79 

So many were found to have one or more troubles 
needing attention that the first results were doubted. 
When more experienced physicians re-examined these 
same children they found a still larger proportion 
needing treatment. Examinations were continued 
until November 1, 1906, with results that raised 
serious questions when presented graphically. 

601,869 children now registered in the public schools of N.Y. City. 6% are 
100,000 already physically examined. undernourished. 

lOg have 

post-nasal 

§ (66,000) need medical or surgical attention or better nourishment. growths. 

Two-fifths need dental care. 18# have enlarged tonsils. 

38g have enlarged cervical glands. 31g have defective vision. 

If the children examined were representative, there 
must then be 400,000 children who are not only unable 
to take full advantage of their educational oppor- 
tunity, but are also hampering others who have no 
physical defects. The parochial and charitable 
schools and the streets must have 200,000 others in 
need of attention not now given. Furthermore several 
hundred thousand children have gone to work during 
the last few years who are now industrially handi- 
capped, as they were handicapped during their school 
days, by removable physical defects. But are those 
examined representative? The city wants to know, 
just as every teacher in the United States will some 
day want to know, whether or not her children are 



80 The State as Doctor 

struggling against defects that may be corrected as 
soon as she or a school physican speaks to the parent 
or to a charitable society. Facts already gathered 
strengthened the demand for examination of all chil- 
dren in all boroughs instead of a part of the children 
in one borough; $250,000 was voted for such use in 
1907, one-third less than was needed. Meanwhile 
facts are being gathered to show not only what the 
neglected children suffer, but what children examined 
and helped gain from removal of defects and what 
the city gains by making it possible for children to 
pass on with their class instead of spending two or 
more years in each grade. Soon facts will prove con- 
clusively that the examination of all children in all 
boroughs would cost much less than the city is now 
paying to correct evils and check infection that 
examination would prevent. The Committee on 
Physical Welfare of School Children is, as per p. 81, 
examining the home conditions of children found to 
be physically defective to learn whether the cause is 
ignorance, deficient income or misdirected income. 
The results are fast proving the need for education of 
mothers at their homes in the care of children, prep- 
aration of food, ventilation of homes, etc. They will 
further show that the European method of correcting 
physical defects — lunches in school at public expense 
— fails to improve home conditions, to provide for 
the child not yet in school, or to enable the mother to 
use knowledge disclosed by physical examination. 




JOHN J. CRONIN, M.D. 

To Dr. Cronin's initiative, as assistant chief medical in- 
spector, New York Health Department, more than to any other 
one person in the United States, is due the recent awakening 
to the importance to schools and to industry of the thorough 
physical examination of school children. 



2 8 

z a 



Investigation of Home Conditions 81 



i i 



i I p 



S 5 



a q 



5 5 



3 5 « 



• Q 



3 x 

O O 



3 a 



2 | 1 

a O - 

m z z 

o 
o 
o 



o 

i s 

o u 

a a 






82 The State as Doctor 

Official and volunteer facts put together prove con- 
clusively the need and the practicability of efficient co- 
operation of school and health authorities with exist- 
ing private agencies on the basis of indisputable facts. 
Future efficiency demands of the three parties con- 
cerned in this co-operation that their reports show 
progress made, and results gained for pupil, for tax- 
payer and for school. 

The efficiency of the State in promoting health is in 
direct proportion as it employs the methods out- 
lined. Why should efficiency tests — the statistical 
method — be less serviceable or less reputable when ap- 
plied to treatment in hospitals ? 



VI 

Hospital Efficiency 

Hospitals must not only know themselves what each 
item of service costs, but they must show the public 
that they know, and they must enable the public also 
to know. It is our judgment that the hospitals them- 
selves have it in their power, by moving along this 
line, to tap sources of popular support that will be 
adequate to any need. 

These are neither the words of carping critics, dream- 
ing theorists, statistical fiends, nor the superficial 
judgment of men with only a passing interest in hos- 
pital needs. On the contrary, they are two sentences 
from the final report to the hospitals of Greater New 
York by a committee 1 appointed March £3, 1905, by 

1 Committee on Hospital Needs and Hospital Finances: chair- 
man, John E. Parsons, president of General Memorial and 
Woman's Hospitals; John Winters Brannan, M.D., president 
of Bellevue and Allied Hospitals; T. O. Callender, representing 
Brooklyn hospitals; Professor Frederick A. Cleveland, expert 
on finance; ex-Mayor Seth Low; Hoffman Miller, secretary of 
St. Luke's Hospital; Thomas N. Mulry, representing Roman 
Catholic hospitals; Leonard E. Opdycke, Sea Breeze Hospital; 
Frederick Sturges, president of the Hospital for the Ruptured 
and Crippled; Frank Tucker, finance expert; John A. 
Wyeth, M.D., president of the Polyclinic Hospital; secretary, 
William H. Allen, general agent of the New York Association 
for Improving the Condition of the Poor. 



84 Hospital Efficiency 

a conference of over twoscore hospitals, to consider 
means of increasing hospital support. 

For months the hospitals of New York City had been 
advertising annual deficits of from $1,000 to $90,000, 
aggregating nearly $750,000; for lack of funds, 
wards were being closed, out-patient work curtailed 
or postponed, obvious needs neglected; charges of 
extravagance and abuse were given wholesale cur- 
rency, even though emanating from untrustworthy 
sources ; certain physicians who were denied the privi- 
lege of practising in hospitals attributed deficit and 
censure to the monopoly enjoyed by certain other 
physicians charged with running the hospitals for 
the benefit of their private practice; one newspaper 
attack followed another, editorial strictures sup- 
porting letters and interviews with patients and con- 
tributors. Instead of the convincing reply that the 
beneficent work of the hospitals justified, there was 
silent disdain, reference to the respectability and self- 
sacrifice of hospital managers, or appeals for more 
funds. Hospital reports lacked uniformity and clear- 
ness as to receipts and expenses, hence threw little 
light upon the real situation, and furnished shaky 
ground for meeting public criticism. One writer, 
exasperated by the hospitals' supine helplessness, 
asked : "If these hospitals have right on their side, why 
do they not show it?" 

To divert the attention of press and contributor 
from minor defects to inestimable service and urgent 



Conference on Hospital Needs 85 

need, a conference was called by the New York Asso- 
ciation for Improving the Condition of the Poor, on 
the ground that the city's poor suffer most from 
hospital deficits. Over forty hospitals were officially 
represented by managers, superintendents, and auxil- 
iary committees. In addition were delegates from 
relief societies, dispensaries, churches, and social 
settlements. The published program directed dis- 
cussion to the following methods that various hospital 
presidents had suggested for improving the financial 
condition of private hospitals : 

To Increase Revenues. — Educate the public to give 
more; arouse the public by personal rather than 
formal appeals ; induce pastors of all denominations to 
speak more freely and more frequently of giving; 
strengthen the central appealing body ; create for each 
hospital a roll of regular annual contributors ; let the 
city increase the rate for free patients ; undertake by 
common action to raise an adequate endowment ; prove 
that present revenues are economically expended. 

To Decrease Expenditures . — Secure future enlarge- 
ment of facilities through inexpensive house-to- 
house treatment rather than through additional 
hospitals or additional wards ; find out how much 
hospital work ought to cost, and keep within the 
standard. 

To Make Information Available. — Exchange freely 
experience as to expenses and revenues. 

Before adjourning, the conference asked its chair- 



86 Hospital Efficiency 

man, Mr. R. Fulton Cutting, to appoint a committee 
to consider hospital needs and hospital finances. This 
committee of hospital officers, contributors, finance 
experts, worked for fifteen months; studied the 
hospital experience of American and European cities ; 
submitted in November, 1905, tentative suggestions 
as to practicable economies, accounting, and support 
that elicited helpful comment from a large number of 
hospital officers and physicians ; and finally, June 1, 
1906, recommended unanimously but one remedy for 
deficits, extravagance, obsolete methods, lack of public 
interest — more light. 

Many managers looked askance at the proposed 
remedy, — uniform, up-to-date system of accounts 
and reports. "What ! remove a deficit by expending 
more money on statistics?" One manager condensed 
into a paradox the doubt, opposition, and fatalism 
that pervaded many boards : "Few hospitals can afford 
to keep competent bookkeepers." Fortunately, there 
were other hospital managers able to answer from 
their own hospital experience: No hospital is rich 
enough to afford an incompetent bookkeeper. No 
hospital is too poor to afford proof that it is run on 
an economical basis consistent with efficiency in treat- 
ment. No hospital is too poor to spend $5 in saving 
$10 or in making out a case that will secure a gift of 
$100. The methods and needs of our hospitals are 
misunderstood; the only way to remove misunder- 
standing is to produce under standmg. 



More Light Needed 87 

The arguments for more light gained weight from 
the fact that managers were willing to admit the ex- 
travagant tendencies of physicians who "seem to think 
that materials do not cost anything," and "that their 
gratuitous service gives them license to throw economy 
to the winds." During the discussion physicians of 
high rank in several hospitals vied with each other 
in telling stories of mismanagement and admitted that 
they used two, four, or eight times the material in 
hospitals that they did in their private practice. The 
defence of such volunteer supervision as is possible 
where there is no proper accounting was answered by 
a hospital president : Our American system is all right 
from the point of view of training physicians and 
nurses, but all wrong from the point of view of 
hospital management. 

Managers who feared that more light would cost too 
much, or would lead to unfair comparison, were told 
by others in such phrases as follow of savings and 
earnings effected by improved accounting: cost of 
fence reduced 50 per cent. ; — saving of coal, 
$6,000; — $150 a week on linen bandages alone; — 
13 per cent, saved on provisions by checking store- 
room ; — thousands saved on drug bill ; — we hope 
to regain the confidence of our benevolent people, lost 
because of former extravagance and inability to prove 
effort to economise. 

Editorial comment in medical and in hospital jour- 
nals, as well as in the secular press, showed a general 



88 Hospital Efficiency 

conviction throughout the country that hospitals ought 
to tell the public more — ought first to want to know 
more themselves — about the efficiency and economy of 
their physicians, their superintendents, their nurses, 
and the managers themselves. A university dean 
wrote : "A general impression is gaining ground that 
the funds invested by a community in social better- 
ment should be more carefully husbanded and more 
efficiently applied." Newspaper editorials gave wise 
counsel : "If a dozen hospitals should unite in submit- 
ting themselves to professional advice regarding their 
accounts, and should publish such certification of 
methods and results, every presumption would favour 
those so acting in comparison with those neglecting 
such simple means of fortifying themselves in public 
esteem." — "Where there is no accounting, there is no 
responsibility and no contentment." — "Managers 
should maintain their positions, not because they are 
estimable gentlemen, but because of their efficiency in 
the performance of the duties they are expected to 
perform." 

It is made extremely difficult to discuss the efficiency 
of volunteer hospital boards, because their service is 
voluntary, and because it is true that hospitals man- 
aged by them have been more efficient, as a rule, than 
hospitals managed by paid (political) boards. It is 
intended to contrast here, not a noble-minded philan- 
thropist with a party worker, or a well-managed 
private hospital with a badly managed public office; 



Test is Service Rendered 89 

but rather is it hoped to indicate that in judging 
philanthropist as well as political appointee the essen- 
tial test is not the kind of man, not the kind of compen- 
sation, but the kind of service rendered. 

The reluctance to adopt at once the more light remedy 
is traceable partly to inertia, partly to the goodness 
fallacy, and partly to the estimable-gentleman-man- 
of -affairs tradition in hospital management. What 
more should the public need to know than that "hos- 
pital boards are under the direction of managers re- 
cruited by natural selections from our best citizens?" 
To challenge the efficiency of these naturally (mutu- 
ally) selected best citizens, to insinuate that any short- 
comings could offset benevolent inattention, or gratuit- 
ous and self-sacrificing service, seems almost ungrate- 
ful. Are not hospital boards made up mainly of men 
who have won great success in their own business, "men 
to whom you would gladly intrust your fortune for in- 
vestment ?" It certainly seems strange that a man who 
has been able in law or business to gain foremost rank 
in his community should not be thoroughly efficient in 
managing a small affair like a hospital. If you add 
to this man's business prowess that of his fifteen or 
thirty fellow-directors, you have, indeed, a strong 
combination of intelligence, interest, and potential ef- 
ficiency. They give lavishly of experience, judgment, 
time, and study that in the world of commerce would 
be worth thousands and hundred of thousands of dol- 
lars. Is not, therefore, the mere suggestion of inefR- 



90 Hospital Efficiency 

ciency in their management of hospitals an in- 
dictment of their own business integrity or 
acumen ? 

Fortunately it is not. The successful lawyer does 
not expect every man he meets to approve his golf- 
playing, his singing, or his choice of ties. To say 
that a man swims badly, is a poor tennis player, talks 
too much, laughs too often, jokes too freely, works too 
hard, is never accepted as an indictment of his business 
ability. Few bankers or lawyers would accept respon- 
sibility for the successful management, during their 
spare hours, of a department store or a theatre. But 
for some reason the man who knows the stock market 
from A to Z expects his colleagues and the world at 
large to believe that because he is a director he must 
know from A to Z the business of running a hospital, 
school, charitable society, or church. It is not suffi- 
ciently appreciated that this lawyer, or broker, or 
merchant is applying entirely different methods and 
tests in his hospital work — methods that would wreck 
his own business and lose him every client over night. 
Men whose affairs are organised on the principle 
that a $100 clerk should never be permitted to do the 
work of a $30 messenger will go into a hospital and 
spend their time on routine inspection, making esti- 
mates, counting details. The serious aspect of this 
situation is not so much that the directors' energy is 
wasted, as that the work itself is poorly and sporadi- 
cally done. Because many directors do not apply the 



Testing Efficiency of Directors 01 

efficiency test to their own connection with hospital 
management, or because so many have a false and 
misleading standard of trusteeship, false and mislead- 
ing standards are applied to the work of the various 
departments of a particular hospital, to the hospital 
as a whole, and to all of the hospitals in a community 
viewed as one group that ought to be disclosing and 
attacking the conditions that make for sickness and 
depleted vitality. 

The director has a ticker in his office, showing 
changes of the market; keeps a double-entry set of 
books with indexes galore to enable him to tell in- 
stantly where his business stands to-day as compared 
with yesterday and the day before ; and never dreams 
of trusting the memory of a clerk or a colleague as 
to the result of the year's business. So eager is the 
efficient business man to learn from his own mistakes 
and from the success of his competitors that patents 
and copyrights are granted to protect initiative and 
originality. Yet this same efficient business man, meta- 
morphosed into recognised success as director, loses 
his avidity ; governs the hospital without analysing his 
own and his colleagues' experience; accepts from a 
hospital superintendent or treasurer a summary of the 
year's work that does not show where the hospital 
stood at the beginning of the year, how far it has 
travelled, in what direction it is going, what needs it 
has met, what needs it has failed to meet. He feels 
toward himself and associates as one hospital presi- 



92 Hospital Efficiency 

dent felt toward his superintendent : "It is enough for 
me to know that Mr. X is there." 

Mr. A is officer of two hospitals. He would be un- 
willing to say that he is more interested in one than 
in the other ; that he has been more intelligent or more 
efficient in one than in the other. Hospital A is suc- 
cessful, hospital B is unsuccessful in securing dona- 
tions, though the work of the latter has the stronger 
appealing power. Hospital A is celebrated for its 
efficient management ; hospital B has not the same rep- 
utation ; in fact, it is not long since serious difficulties, 
involving both waste and infidelity, were discovered. 
What is the difference? It just happens that in hospi- 
tal A there is an up-to-date mechanism for applying 
the efficiency test to the work of every department and 
of every officer, including the directors themselves ; in 
hospital B there is no such test. The difference is not 
due to the character of the trustees, for in hospital A, 
prior to the employment of a business doctor, the same 
conditions existed as in hospital B. 

A similar discrepancy exists in the case of another 
prominent officer of hospital B, who happens also to 
be officer of a charitable institution that always obtains 
support and — is it by chance? — uses methods that 
would be creditable to a railroad. 

A superintendent who is not able to control the 
dietary of his hospital maintains that the waste would 
support a ward of forty beds. Another says that 
"barrels of good food" are thrown away every day. 



Examples of Inefficiency 9& 

A young surgeon recently ordered instruments costing 
$500 ; he had checked from a catalogue all the things 
that he thought it would be "nice" to have. An officer 
of a hospital that protests indignantly against the in- 
sinuation that its business methods need revision, 
visited a western hospital and now regales his friends 
with the story of how "the ideas I brought back with 
me save thousands of dollars annually for my hospi- 
tal." A secretary becomes interested in the drug sup- 
ply, and by insisting upon a monthly report saves 
enough to maintain one ward. A ventilating appara- 
tus, costing enough to build a ward, is found, too late, 
to be unsuitable. One storeroom has reduced by $150 
a week the cost of linen bandages without the sur- 
geons having noticed any reduction in the supply. 
Even conservative directors protest against the G. P. 
fetish — the domination of the Grateful Patient whose 
generosity erects handsome memorials without provid- 
ing funds to meet the additional burdens imposed. 

That such things should occur in hospitals is not at 
all surprising, and is not at all occasion for criticism ; 
but for them to exist without being detected by the 
directors or by superintendents, or by a prospective 
giver wishing to make sure that his gift will be well 
invested, is reason for disquietude. On my desk are a 
number of hospital reports. In one a giver can find 
the number, age, and sex of cases treated, and whether 
care was given in the hospital or at home, for sixty- 
two different diseases ; all about operations on one hun- 



94 Hospital Efficiency 

dred different parts of the body; number cured, im- 
proved, unimproved, and died. Of expense he finds 
just one item: "hospital expenditures, $100,000." 
Not a word as to how the money was spent; how the 
total compares with last year; what work it was im- 
possible to do ; what new needs were disclosed ; how much 
went for care of the buildings ; how much for care of 
patients, for annual report, etc. The giver is told, 
however, that a considerable percentage of the cost 
was met by consuming endowment. Scores of millions 
and unsurpassed executive ability are represented on 
the board of managers, whose principal officers happen 
also to be officers of other societies that publish ex- 
cellent reports. 

The second report gives nearly one hundred pages to 
tabulation of details regarding every conceivable dis- 
ease ; the dietary is given ; in the list of contributions 
in kind are cut flowers, ice, crockery, toys, and maga- 
zines. But nowhere does this report show the number 
of beds ; what it costs to maintain a bed in the surgical 
department, in the general ward, or in the babies' 
ward; or the cost of kitchen or laboratory. It does 
not explain how a bed may be endowed in perpetuity 
for $5,000, yielding $225 annually, when it costs four 
times that sum to keep a patient in that bed. One can- 
not learn what proportion of provisions went to the 
attendants, who number 30 per cent, more per day 
than patients ; what it costs to keep a private patient ; 
how much money the hospital needs next year; the 



Where Efficiency Tests Are Lacking 95 

total of the endowment fund ; what efforts were made 
to obtain the current donations that paid the cost 
of the hospital for only eighteen out of 365 days. 
There is no asset or liability account, no showing of 
work done and of funds disbursed in the different 
months. Yet this hospital is widely known for its ex- 
cellent medical service, as well as for its deficits and 
urgent needs not met. 

Two other reports tell all about fasciotomies, carci- 
noma ventriculi, nationality and dress of patients, 
distribution of provisions, etc. ; but neither tells how 
much it costs to support a patient a day or a week; 
what endowment is required to pay the entire expense 
of supporting a bed in perpetuity; what proportion 
the cost of maintaining of free beds is borne by public 
subsidy; what fraction of the day's treatment given 
is wholly free; how much certain or pledged income 
the hospital has. Not one summarises the facts pub- 
lished so as to show the direction in which it is going 
with respect to classes of patient or of expense. Yet 
these reports are vastly superior to the average hospi- 
tal report, and the hospitals for which they plead are 
among the foremost of their kind in the world. Each 
reports current expenses in excess of current income 
by many thousands of dollars. Each consumes en- 
dowment and legacy, whereas it is supposed to use only 
the interest on those funds. In this respect, too, they 
are typical of private hospitals throughout the world. 

For the Hospital Conference above referred to a 



96 Hospital Efficiency 

comparative digest was prepared, showing, so far as 
was possible from the reports of twenty-six general 
hospitals, fifteen special hospitals, and ten women's 
and children's hospitals, what degree of uniformity 
existed as to 120 items. This number, 120, consists of 
significant facts that one hospital or another found it 
of importance to record. Many hospitals failed to 
give even the total patient days, few gave the percen- 
tage of free days and the endowed bed days ; several 
of the important hospitals did not give even the num- 
ber of patients; only a half-dozen gave the largest 
number of patients at one time, and not half gave the 
average number of patients per day ; eleven of the 
fifty-one gave the gross cost per patient per day, one 
the cost of food per patient per day ; five, the number 
of days' board given employees ; two, the cost of pri- 
vate patients. A half-dozen analysed receipts to show 
the relative importance of different sources of income. 
Few broke up the item of income into its component 
parts to show of contributions how much was due to 
donations, membership dues, subscriptions, entertain- 
ments and fairs, church collection boxes, auxiliary col- 
lections ; how much from the city or from the Satur- 
day and Sunday Hospital Association; how much of 
permanent investment was wiped out for current 
uses ; how much of hospital receipts came from 
ward patients, private-room patients, special nursing, 
board of non-patients, use of operating-room, etc. ; 
of dispensary receipts, how much from fees, and from 



Uniform Reports Needed 97 

sales of drugs ; how much from ambulance, or from 
out patients for services and supplies. 

But, however detailed and satisfactory the report of 
any individual hospital, it can tell but part of its 
story unless given in the same language as that of 
other hospitals doing similar work. It is said that we 
learn most by imitation. At least it is true that we 
learn much by observing our colleagues, whether in 
the factory doing piece work, in the shop buying silk, 
in business selling goods, or as trustees administering a 
hospital. Having learned what we can by examining 
carefully our own hospitals, it is important to learn 
whether or not our house physician, our superin- 
tendent, our building, our situation, are bringing re- 
sults comparable with those of hospitals that appeal to 
the same public to support the same kind of work. 

Entirely apart from the importance of learning how 
to reduce expenditure so as to keep pace with the 
best thought in the hospital world, it is also necessary 
to be able to explain differences in expense, showing 
that they are due to differences in kind of work or in 
quality of material rather than to differences in spirit 
or in practice of economy. An Italian patient coming 
to a hospital is helped if he can speak English, or if 
there is an Italian-speaking person in connection with 
the hospital, or if a friendly Italian happens to be 
there at the time, or perhaps by signs. In any 
event, the only way the hospital and the Italian 
patient can work together to aid that patient is to 



98 Hospital Efficiency 

discover somewhere a common language. Is it not 
quite as important that ten hospitals discussing their 
experience should use the same language? 

The first step in what bids fair to become a revolu- 
tion in the attitude of American hospitals toward 
actual and potential givers was taken in New York 
in June, 1906, when four of the leading hospitals 1 
agreed upon a common form of recording and publish- 
ing important facts as to efficiency and as to needs. 

Because this plan furnishes the basis for a publicity 
campaign in behalf of all American hospitals, and be- 
cause it is the Big Four's response to the agitation 
of the past two years, its headings are given in full 
at the end of this chapter. 

There is not a hospital in the country that could not 
describe its experience and its needs in the language 
provided by these schedules. Wherever managers 
want to answer questions not here asked, it is easy to 
insert a new sub-heading. It is quite conceivable that 
many managers will not care to distinguish medical 
from surgical supplies, or milk and cream from butter 
and eggs ; in this case the general headings may still 
be used and should be used, as should the comparative 
tables. Uniformity would still exist if hospitals hav- 
ing few patients, needing little public help, and desir- 
ing to learn little from their own or others' experience, 
should put all expenditures under the general heads. 

'New York, Presbyterian, Roosevelt, St. Luke's. See p. 104. 




FRANK TUCKER 

Lecturer and writer on the relation of records and accounts to 
the efficiency of hospitals and other charitable enterprises. 



First Uniform Accounting in America 99 



Administration expenses , 

Professional care of patients 

Department expenses 

General house and property expenses 
Corporation or other expenses 




1906 



The cost of making this separation is a trifle, because 
it is quite as easy to post an expenditure of $10 on one 
sheet as on another, and infinitely more valuable to 
have it posted where it answers an important question. 
Two additions will undoubtedly be made as time tests 
this uniform schedule — viz. : a column showing in- 
crease or decrease, and a column for 'percentages. The 
purpose of reports is to inform; the purpose of uni- 
formity is to enable the public to use one language 
in studying the needs of different hospitals and to 
enable each hospital to learn from others' experience ; 
the comparison of this year with last shows whether 
each department of each hospital is going forward 
or backward, or standing still. But even directors 
seldom make the actual subtraction necessary to see 
that $22,418 is $2,545 greater than $19,873. When 
that is done, still fewer would discover that the in- 
crease is 11 per cent. We deem it of great importance 
to know that a poor family pays 25 per cent, for rent 
and 45 per cent, for food; it is quite as valid to ask 
what proportion of hospital income goes to pro- 
fessional care of patients, and what to central offices. 



100 Hospital Efficiency 

Is it worth while to make sure that every reader has 
the result of the subtraction and percentage? The 
benefits would outweigh the cost, if only managers 
themselves were given truth that does not mislead. 

An annual report cannot be prepared without great 
expense and greater error, unless the recorci of each 
day's work is taken with a view to answering the ques- 
tions propounded in the annual report. As one hospi- 
tal officer wrote recently: "Yearly statistics are only 
interesting. For practical purposes, such as checking 
extravagancy, locating a leak or a loss, discovering 
inferior supplies, and for locating any new condition 
that may arise, monthly and sometimes weekly statis- 
tics are necessary." As business men know, weekly 
and daily blanks may be purchased to order, with in- 
structions for their use, if once a hospital decides what 
information it will call for from its various officers. 
Many hospitals are having the experience thus 
described by an officer of a Worcester, Mass., hospital: 
"We have on our board two very successful manu- 
facturers who have made a thorough study of reducing 
expenses in their business. They thought they could 
apply the same methods to the hospital accounts. 
They have adopted an entirely new system never be- 
fore used in any hospital, from which we expect not- 
able results." 

A uniform system of reporting and accounting is 
opposed on the ground that it will encourage compari- 
son of two hospitals whose effort is differently dis- 



Hospital Compendium Urged 101 

tributed among various kinds of work. For example : 
You read in a comparative statement that hospital A 
spends $2.75 a day for each ward patient, where hos- 
pital B spends but $1.90 per day. Without knowing 
more of the work of these two hospitals, it appears 
that hospital A is extravagant. Upon inquiry it may 
develop that hospital A has a much larger proportion 
of cases requiring surgical attention, bandages, special 
diet, extra nursing; whereas most of the work of 
hospital B is for protracted diseases requiring little 
special attention and little extra nursing or diet. Ob- 
viously there are two ways to prevent misunder- 
standing. One is to refuse to take part in a plan for 
uniform accounting for fear that one's hospital will 
be misrepresented; the other is to use the same lan- 
guage as the other hospital and explain what seem to 
be discrepancies. The trouble with the first plan — 
evasion — is that it does not succeed. An uninformed 
public is a fickle friend. The Committee on Hospital 
Needs and Finances strongly recommended that the 
hospitals of New York combine in making a study of 
the different hospitals, that would show exactly how 
each one is organised, what work it undertakes, what 
mechanism it uses to accomplish this result ; and then : 
compare hospitals only so far as they are doing a simi- 
lar work. Such a compendium would work as follows : 
Two hospital superintendents compare notes. One is 
using thirty tons of coal a month, the other is using 
fifty. These facts in themselves tell nothing as to the 



102 Hospital Efficiency 

economy of the first hospital. When we know that 
they treat exactly the same number of patients, the 
difference in coal comes to mean a difference either in 
stoking, in character of building, in method of venti- 
lation or in coal. The superintendent who uses fifty 
tons a month will want to know how the other's build- 
ing is constructed, what furnace and what ventilat- 
ing apparatus are in use, what kind of coal is pur- 
chased. If he finds that the same apparatus is in use ; 
if the buildings are constructed in practically the same 
way ; if the same quality of coal is used, then there is 
reason to believe that either his stoker or his engineer 
is careless in the use of coal ; that the coal is pea when 
it should be buckwheat ; that there is theft ; that coal 
fails to reach the bunkers; that his apparatus is out 
of order ; or that the difference must be explained by 
the failure of the economical hospital to give its 'pa- 
tients proper heat and ventilation. In any event, to 
separate each hospital into its component parts makes 
it possible to arrange eighty hospitals so that each can 
learn from others' experience. 

In the absence of such compendium, no language 
exists to express in clearness and fairness the expe- 
rience of hospitals without misrepresenting one or the 
other. Some hospitals are small, some isolated, some in 
congested districts ; some exist for surgical cases only, 
others for maternity cases, some for convalescent 
rather than acute cases. It is obvious that it is as 
impossible, without knowing more than the term hos- 



Hospital Manual Urged 103 

pital, to class together twenty such institutions, as 
to attempt by the word man to bring within one 
class twenty men of different nationalities, different 
ages, different walks of life. 

This last year a conference was organised of the 
New York City hospital superintendents. It purposes 
to meet regularly to compare notes as to hospital man- 
agement. The National Association of Hospital 
Superintendents has acomplished much in stimulating 
interest and impressing upon hospitals throughout the 
country that they have much to learn from one an- 
others' experience. The measure of its success, how- 
ever, as the measure of profit from verbal exchange of 
experience, is in a published statement shorn of per- 
sonal elements, putting in black and white points of 
difference and points of agreement. The hospitals 
and the public should have an annual digest of hospi- 
tal data such as that which has helped the British hos- 
pitals so much during the past ten years. When this 
manual is published — an American Burdette — it is to 
be hoped that it will be adequately supported so as to 
emphasise over and over again the highest mission of 
the hospital — to conduct an active, progressive, educa- 
tional campaign, informing the public regularly and 
repeatedly as to the causes that make for preventable 
mortality, sickness and misery. When the selected 
men of our communities can tell at a glance what now 
requires hours of stumbling in committee, their valua- 
ble services and business talent will be released for the 



104 Hospital Efficiency 

statesmanlike work they are in position to do. It will 
not then be necessary for crusades like the tuberculosis 
crusade to originate outside the hospital, nor for lay- 
men to sound the alarm for impure milk, unsanitary 
bakeshops, filthy streets and overcrowded tenements. 



Headings of Uniform Accounting and Reporting 
Scheme Adopted in 1906 by Four Leading Hospitals 
of New York City, and Endorsed in 1907 by the (per- 
manent) Hospital Conference. 

SCHEDULE I 

Detailed Statement of Operating, Corporation, and Other 
Current Expenses 

administration expenses 

Salaries, officers, and clerks. 

Office expenses. 

Stationery, printing, and postage. 

Telephone and telegraph. 

Legal expenses. 

Miscellaneous. 

Total administration expenses. 

PROFESSIONAL CARE OF PATIENTS 

Salaries and wages: 
Physicians. 

Superintendent of nurses, assistant, and instructors. 
Nurses. 

Special nurses. 
Orderlies. 
Special orderlies. 
Ward employees. 



Uniform Hospital Reports 105 

Equipment for nurses: 

Uniforms. 

Books. 

Instruments. 
Medical and surgical supplies: 

Apparatus and instruments. 

Medical supplies. 

Surgical supplies. 

Alcohol, liquors, wines, etc. 
^Vensary: ) Salaries and labour# 

Emergency ward: y 

Visiting and home (district) nursing: \ Supplies. 

Total professional care of patients. 

DEPARTMENT EXPENSES 

Ambulance : 

Pathological laboratory: 
Training school: 
Housekeeping : 
Kitchen: 
Laundry : 

Steward's department: 
Labour. 
Provisions : 
Bread. 

Milk and cream. 
Groceries. 
Butter and eggs. 
Fruits and vegetables. 
Meat, poultry, and fish. 

Total, steward's department. 
Total department expenses. 

GENERAL HOUSE AND PROPERTY EXPENSE 

Electric lighting. 
Fuel, oil, and waste. 
Gas. 
Ice. 



Salaries and labour. 
Supplies. 



106 Uniform Hospital Reports 

Insurance. 

Maintenance, real estate and buildings. 

Maintenance, machinery and tools. 

Plumbing and steam-fitting. 

Photography. 

Rent. 

Miscellaneous. 

Total general house and property expenses. 

Total operating expenses. 

CORPORATION" OR OTHER CURRENT EXPENSES 

Salaries, officers and clerks. 

Stationery, printing, and postage. 

Legal expenses. 

Interest on mortgages or loans payable. 

Taxes. 

Miscellaneous. 

Total corporation expenses. 
Current expenses from special funds for stated purposes, 
(Show expenditure from each fund separately) 

Grand total current expenses. 
Excess of current revenue over current expenses. 

Total. 

SCHEDULE II 

Detailed Statement of Current Revenue 

hospital receipts (or operating receipts) 

Private room patients. 
Board of friends of patients. 
Ward pay patients. 
Special nursing. 
Dispensary. 
Emergency ward. 
Ambulance fees. 
Miscellaneous. 

Total hospital receipts. 



Uniform Hospital Reports 107 

OTHER REVENUE OR INCOME 

From the public treasury. 

Donations from individuals to meet current expenses. 

Donations from churches to meet current expenses. 

From Hospital Saturday and Sunday Association. 

Net receipts from entertainments, fairs, fetes, etc. 

Legacies, unrestricted. 

Profits on investments sold. 

Revenue from investments or funds for current use. 

Miscellaneous. 

Total other revenue or income. 
Income from special funds for current expenses: 
(Show income account each fund separately.) 

Grand total current revenue. 

Excess current expenses over current revenue. 
Total. 

SCHEDULE III 
Summary of Financial Transactions for the Year 
capital expenditures 
Additions to sites and grounds. 
Additions and betterments, buildings. 
Furniture and fixtures (if charged to capital account). 
New machinery (if charged to capital account). 
Apparatus and instruments (if charged to capital account). 
Ambulances, live stock, etc. (if charged to capital account). 
Miscellaneous. 

Total capital expenditures. 

SURPLUS ACCOUNT 

Grand total current expenses, Schedule I. 
Loss and depreciation. 

(Show items separately if desired.) 
Total. 
Surplus for the year. 
Total 



108 Uniform Hospital Reports 

Summary of Financial Transactions for Year 
capital receipts 
Fully endowed beds. 
Partly endowed beds. 

General or special funds or gifts for other than current ex- 
penses. 
(Show receipts account each fund or gift separately.) 
Total capital receipts. 

DEFICIT ACCOUNT 

Grand total revenue, Schedule II. 

Amount charged off endowed bed fund or other fund reserves 
account liability of hospital having ceased. 
Total. 
Deficit for the year. 
Total. 



SCHEDULE IV 
Comparative Balance Sheet for Years 
capital assets 
Hospital properties and equipments: 
Sites and grounds. 
Buildings. 

Furniture and fixtures. 
Machinery and tools. 
Apparatus and instruments. 
Ambulances, live stock, etc. 
Miscellaneous. 

Investments: 
Mortgages receivable. 
Bonds. 
Stocks. 
Other investments. 

Total capital assets. 



Uniform Hospital Reports 109 



CURRENT ASSETS 

Loans and notes receivable. 

Accounts receivable. 

Accounts receivable from public treasury. 

General material on hand. 

Cash in hands of treasurer. 

Cash in hands of superintendent. 

A dvances : 
Prepaid insurance. 
Other prepaid expenses. 
Total current assets. 

Grand total assets. 
Deficit. 
Total. 



Comparative Balance Sheet for Years 
capital liabilities 

Capital account (hospital properties and equipments). 
Endowed bed fund reserves. 
Partly endowed bed fund reserves. 
Other fund reserves. 

(List each separately.) 
Bonds, outstanding on hospital property. 
Mortgages payable. 

Total capital liabilities. 

CURRENT LIABILITIES 

Loans and notes payable. 

Audited vouchers unpaid or accounts payable. 
Total current liabilities. 
Grand total liabilities. 
Surplus. 
Total. 



110 Uniform Hospital Reports 

SCHEDULE V 

Statement Showing Increase or Decrease of Principal of 
all Capital Funds During Year Ended September 30, 1906 



Descriptio i of 
Funds 


Amount 

Sept. 30, 

1905 


Received 
during 
Year 


Expended 
during 
Year 


Amount 

Sept. 30, 

1906 


Increase 


Decrease 
















Total 















SCHEDULE VI 

Comparative Statistics for Years 1906, 1905 



HOSPITAL WARDS AND PRIVATE ROOMS 

Patients in hospital first of year: 
In medical wards, 
In surgical wards, 
In private rooms, 

Total. Male. 

Patients admitted during year: Female. 

To medical wards, 
To surgical wards, 
To private rooms, 
Total 

Total patients treated in hospital wards and private rooms 
during year: 
Male. 
Female. 



Uniform Hospital Reports 



111 



Patients discharged during year: 
Cured. 
Improved. 
Unimproved. 

Transferred to other institutions. 
Died. 

Total. 

Patients in hospital end of year: 
In medical wards, 
In surgical wards, 
In private rooms, 
Total 



Male. 



Female. 



Total patient days treatment, 

Percentage, 

Average patients per day, 



Free ward. 
Endowed bed. 
Pay ward. 
Private room. 
Total. 



Average time per patient in hospital. 

Daily average cost per private room patient. 

Daily average cost per ward patient. 



EMERGENCY WAED 



Patients under treatment first of year, " 
Patients admitted during year, Male. 

Total patients treated during year, „ 

Patients discharged during year, Female. 

Patients under treatment end of year, 
Visits made to emergency ward during year. 
Average visits made per day. 
Average visits per patient. 
Daily average cost per emergency ward patient. 



112 Uniform Hospital Reports 

DISPENSARY 

Patients under treatment first of year, " 
Patients admitted during year, Male. 

Total patients treated during year, I 

Patients discharged during year, Female. 

Patients under treatment end of year, 

Visits made to dispensary during year. 

Average visits per day. 

Average visits per patient. 

Daily average cost per dispensary patient. 



AMBULANCE 

Ambulance calls during year. 

Average calls per day. 

Average cost per ambulance call. 

Patients treated by ambulance surgeon in emergency ward 

and transferred. 
Patients treated by ambulance surgeon and left at place of 

call or transferred direct to other institutions. 

VISITING OF HOME (DISTRICT) NURSING 

Number of patients visited. 
Number of visits made. 
Average visits per day. 
Average cost per visit. 

SUMMARY 

Total patients treated during year in all departments. 
Average patients per day in all departments. 
Daily average number of employees boarded in hospital. 
Daily cost per capita for provisions for all persons supported. 



VII 

School Efficiency 

"It is high time we put a stop to all this talk of apply- 
ing business principles to school management." Of 
the many notable facts regarding the foregoing senti- 
ment not the least significant is that it was uttered 
by the majority leader of the most important educa- 
tional body in the world, in the autumn of 1905, just 
three months before the accounting methods of that 
board were faced about in the direction of business 
principles. Another feature that deserves comment is 
that "all this talk" instead of nearing a natural or 
violent death has only just begun. Where one school 
superintendent, principal or trustee now talks of ap- 
plying business tests to school management, there are 
one hundred who have not yet seen how much better 
the efficiency test is than the hit-or-miss goodness test 
of the present day. No one in our cities, not except- 
ing either the pastor, the saloon keeper or the ward 
leader, is so close to social facts of importance as the 
teachers and principals of public and parochial 
schools. If infection breaks out they have prompt 
information in the presence of a diseased child or in 
an absence that when explained, leads to notice of the 
disease. If there is illegal child labour, underfeeding, 



114 School Efficiency 

defective play space, general filth, the teacher first 
of all sees the physical evidence. No one else notices 
so quickly or feels so keenly the improvement resulting 
from pure food, better housing, cleaner streets, im- 
proved sanitary and industrial conditions. The school 
is the only meeting place where it is expected that in- 
equalities and handicaps of home environment shall be 
obvious. It is for this reason that the school is our 
richest mine of information with regard both to home 
needs and to the personal and social obstacles to home 
improvement. How efficiency tests can help a com- 
munity read the school child's story may be shown by 
enumerating a number of things that we really want 
to know about our schools, questions that the very 
existence of the public school presumes our ability to 
answer, but the majority of which cannot be answered 
for the schools of one single community in the United 
States. 

As to the Physical Welfare of School Children 

Are children regularly examined by a physician or 
nurse; does the examination note eye and head 
troubles only, or all physical and mental defects ; 
is a record kept of each child's physical improve- 
ment or retrogression ; are children examined once 
a year, once during school life or once a month? 

Have they growths in the nose, enlarged glands, 
enlarged tonsils, cramped lung capacity or bad 
teeth that make it impossible to breathe or digest 
properly ? 



Questions as to Physical Welfare 115 

Are they undernourished and rickety? 

Have they any chronic disease ? 

Have 31% (as in New York) trouble with the eyes 
that makes it impossible to see figures on the 
blackboard or to read without tiring? 

If 66% (as in New York) are in serious need of 
medical, dental and ocular care, what efforts are 
made to persuade or compel parents to take them 
to a family physician, to a hospital or dispensary ? 

What attempt is made to find out whether the con- 
dition is due to ignorance on the part of the 
parent, to neglect or indifference or to insufficient 
income ? 

Do the schools invite the co-operation of relief 
agencies for providing eyeglasses, shoes, food, 
hospital treatment where the overtaxed widow or 
sick father is unable to provide them? 

Does the school environment itself aggravate physi- 
cal defects ; is there adequate light ; is there 
proper ventilation ; is there opportunity for wash- 
ing hands or bathing ; is ample play space about 
the school provided ; do the children have enough 
exercise in the open air; are they permitted to 
sit facing the light, to lean over, to strain the 
eyes ; are they compelled to study out of school 
when they should be playing or sleeping ; what is 
the effect upon health of compelling boys of 
14 and 15, who work by day, to attend night 
school ? 

Does the teaching of hygiene give children an in- 
telligent interest in their vitality and its relation 
to comfort and to earning power ; is the curricu- 
lum consistent with known laws of hygiene ? 

Does the undernourished child drop out earlier than 



116 School Efficiency 

his well nourished playmate; is he tardy fre- 
quently ; does he play truant ; is it he who fills the 
backward classes? 

How many children are sent home from school be- 
cause of infectious disease ; what is the average time 
lost in this way ; how many of them fail to return 
to school; are they followed to their homes and 
their parents shown how to care properly for 
them ; if children stay out a month, do they take 
up their studies where they left off, thus losing 
one month only, are they aided to catch up, or 
do they try to swim beyond their depth, thus 
losing three months, a grade, a year; is the 
teacher promptly informed when the child may 
safely return? 

Is a child examined for after effects of measles and 
scarlet fever? 

Are children suffering from permanent or infectious 
skin trouble or from pulmonary tuberculosis fol- 
lowed up after they are excluded from school until 
proper hospital and dispensary treatment is in- 
sured ; or are they permitted to run at large, re- 
infecting themselves and endangering the lives 
of their playmates and parents? 

Does the extent to which infection interferes with 
the schools indicate that the department of 
health is promptly detecting and excluding first 
cases ; has the money value of such efficiency or 
the money penalty for inefficiency been computed 
and advertised? 

What portion of the schools are not supplied with 
nurses and physicians ; how many visits to homes 
were paid by nurses and physicians connected 
with the schools ; how many individual homes were 



Questions as to Child's Progress 117 

visited; do records distinguish between children 
helped and times children are helped? 

Is it known how many crippled, deaf, dumb or 
blind children of school age are in your city ; 
the efforts made to train their minds and 
give them a measure of happiness and self- 
dependence ? 

Is child labour legislation based upon the child's 
health and strength or upon his years ; is work 
certificate refused if the child is physically unfit 
for work or in need of medical or dental care ; is 
any precaution taken to prevent weak children 
going into unsuitable trades? 

As to the Child's Progress at School 

If the purpose of the school is "to enrich person- 
ality," have we evidence that such is the result 
of our curriculum? 

Is the curriculum fitted to the 3 % who go to college, 
or to the 97 % who do not ? 

Are changes in curriculum based upon experience 
or on untested theory; are children taught too 
many subjects; are the three r's weakened or 
strengthened by the addition of special subjects, 
by manual training, cooking, music, nature 
study ? 

What proportion finish the grammar grades ; how 
many drop out at the third, fourth, fifth, sixth 
or seventh grade? 

Have you thought of substituting five three-year 
groups for four four-year groups from primary 
through college; would the average term of 
schooling be lengthened? 



118 School Efficiency 

What children are behind the grade proper for their 
age ; are reasons given for the backwardness ; 
how much does it cost each year to give children 
work they have already gone over one or more 
times ; is special attention given the backward 
child to enable him to get into the proper grade ; 
do the board of directors, superintendent, and 
principals have a monthly record showing prog- 
ress in caring for backward children, or is a 
census taken but once a year? 

Are children of known mental deficiency given 
special training adapted to their capacity; are 
they kept in special classes so as not to hamper 
the normal children? 

Do records show the percentage promoted in each 
class in each school ; is attempt made to explain 
failure to win promotion; do the schools that 
show a high percentage not promoted show also 
a high percentage of absence and truancy ; do 
pupils who began on part time in lower grades 
move on as rapidly in higher grades as pupils 
who began on full time? 

Are reasons learned why children drop from the 
roll ; showing how many left to go to work ; how 
many removed from the city ; how many dropped 
out because of ill health, physical defects, in- 
difference or chronic truancy? 

Do schools that promote children by subjects rather 
than by grades show a higher percentage of sur- 
vival, that is, do more seventh-grade pupils go 
on into the eighth grade or do more second year 
high school pupils graduate ; has flexible grading 
been tried in your elementary schools ; is a card 
sent with the child from grade to grade showing 



Questions as to Teachers 119 

the new teacher his previous record, his aptitudes, 
difficulties, and physical defects? 

Are inequalities of result shown in tables comparing 
school with school, classes of 50 with classes of 
50, month with month, district with district, your 
city with other cities of the same school popu- 
lation ? 

Is attempt made to discover and explain why large 
numbers who register for evening schools never 
attend ; why so many drop out after the third or 
fourth evening ; are night pupils classified accord- 
ing to nationality, age, number of weeks attend- 
ing ; is it known why many pupils sleep through 
sessions, wearied by school atmosphere and their 
day's toil ; are night results and day results com- 
pared; are day teachers permitted to teach in 
night schools; if so does their day work suffer? 

As to Teachers and Principals 

Are they provided with school reports and invited 
to make suggestions as to form and content; to 
explain discrepancies between hope and act; are 
they helped to view the whole field of which they 
till a part? 

Are they ranked according to percentage of truan- 
cy, absence, of failure to win promotion, amount 
per pupil spent on supplies ; is any attempt made 
to compare the efficiency or amount of work, — 
principal with principal having the same grades, 
teacher with teacher having the same problems? 

Are they doing hack work or do they regard teach- 
ing as a great opportunity to render social ser- 
vice; are they paid enough to grow as demands 
upon them grow; do their conferences discuss 



120 School Efficiency 

such questions as school census, flexible grading, 
truancy or teachers' pensions, salaries ; do super- 
intendents work with principals and principals 
with teachers ? 
Is merit the only requirement of advancement; is 
merit tested by results at school or by social 
graces or diplomacy? 

As to School Equipment 

Are the good new things we all believe in, night 
schools, recreation centres, vacation schools, gym- 
nasia, shower baths, modern desks and appli- 
ances, roof gardens, interior and outdoor play- 
grounds enjoyed by all pupils in all sections or 
by a small proportion in a few sections ; are all 
new schools built with equal advantages ; is the 
Board working out some definite principle of 
minimum requirement? 

Are new buildings placed where overcrowding exists 
or is threatened, or where some one with influence 
has property for sale? 

Does the statement of new sittings under way show 
for what grades sittings are planned ; is a delay 
of one, three or four years possible in finishing a 
building ? 

Are discrepancies in cost of repairs and coal con- 
sumed explained by comparing school with school 
as to age, material, exposure, kind of furnace, 
ventilating apparatus, coal, etc. ? 

What school buildings are not used for night and 
vacation schools, recreation centres and popular 
lectures ; is the reason for the closing lack of 
money or absence of need in their neighbour- 
hoods ? 



Questions as to Expense 121 

As to School Expense 

Do the published accounts give all expense incurred 
or merely cash disbursed; are debts incurred but 
not paid excluded ; are coal and other supplies on 
hand charged against the year when procured or 
the year when used; how often is an inventory 
taken of supplies? 

Is it clearly shown how much of last year's supplies 
went to primary and how much to grammar 
grades; does a class of forty with an attendance 
of twenty-four use as many supplies as a class 
of forty with an attendance of thirty-five; if 
some schools spend more than others per pupil in 
any or all grades, are discrepancies examined and 
explained ? 

Are salaries divided into amounts for each kind of 
service, — superintendence, supervision, teaching, 
clerical, janitor, direction by trustees? 

Can one tell at a glance the cost of special sub- 
jects, such as German, singing, cooking, manual 
training ? 

Are elementary schools charged with all cost of 
supervision of all schools, or are night and vaca- 
tion schools, high schools, recreation centres 
charged with their share? 

Is the per capita cost based on total enrolled, aver- 
age enrolled or average in attendance ; is the high 
per capita of upper grades concealed by averag- 
ing with the small per capita of lower grades? 

Is the estimate of next year based upon guesses or 
upon this year's experience; does it provide for 
what the city needs or merely what the Board 
thinks it can get; does it ask for more than is 



122 School Efficiency 

needed so as to be ready for a cut ; does it explain 
or evade seeming discrepancies? 
Are results obtained from expenditures described so 
as to be interesting to taxpayers ? 

As to School Trustees 

Do they read their own reports and those of their 
superintendent and state and national commis- 
sioners of education ; how many educational j our- 
nals do they read? 

Is their report published promptly ; is it any better 
than that of departments avowedly partisan 
and political; does it encourage the taxpayer to 
think for himself with regard to school problems ; 
is there anything to show how many meetings 
the trustees have attended ; how much work they 
have done; whether that work is inefficient; if 
they do perfunctorily what paid secretaries would 
have done efficiently? 

Is there evidence in the editorial comment that the 
trustees have read intelligently last year's ex- 
perience, discovered next year's need and ex- 
plained to the taxpayer how much he can save 
in the future if he will meet those needs not par- 
tially but completely ; do the summary, compara- 
tive tables showing increases and decreases in 
percentages indicate that the trustees base their 
opinions on classified experience? 

Would your community have better schools if in- 
stead of 15 or 20 or 46 trustees, who volunteer 
such time as they can conveniently spare from 
their own affairs, there was one board of 3 or 5 
commissioners, at least one of whom being paid 



Present Lack of School Facts 123 

to give his entire time and held strictly responsi- 
ble for efficiency in the use of that time for study- 
ing school administration? 

The foregoing list, long as it is, contains but a frac- 
tion of the questions that it is desirable and practica- 
ble to have answered for every school in the country. 
Being unable to answer them has not hitherto de- 
terred college president, congressman, alderman, cele- 
brated divine, philanthropist from apostrophising the 
American system of universal, free education. They 
sincerely believe that culture itself, business success 
and eminence in the community carry with them a 
just appreciation of educational problems and in- 
tuitive knowledge of educational facts. We want 
great results ; we are willing to pay for them ; ergo, 
we are getting them. The avidity with which the ex- 
ponents of universal education jump from one peda- 
gogical remedy to another implies a little uncertainty 
as to the finality of their judgment, while the impa- 
tience with which the business man criticises the ste- 
nographer and bookkeeper turned out by the schools 
proves him at times a Doubting Thomas. Varying 
degrees of competence are freely admitted when two 
trustees describe their favourite teachers, superin- 
tendents or principals. I once heard two directors 
discuss their respective candidates for promotion. 
Each was convinced that the other's candidate was in- 
competent and untrustworthy. Neither had any evi- 
dence further than "just feelings." 



124 School Efficiency 

Absence of efficiency tests in judging directors and 
their policies is due both to lack of desire to know and 
to prejudice against the statistics necessary for such 
tests. Despite the fact that for fifty years progres- 
sive, independent thinkers within the National Educa- 
tion Association have deplored the lack of definite 
knowledge with regard to school results, one eminent 
officer of that great body publicly avows that he "ab- 
hors statistics." Another says, "The time and energy 
of teachers should be given to instruction rather than 
the compilation of statistics." The head of one of 
the most important high schools in the United States 
says of statistics, — "They are commonly regarded by 
teachers as one of our greatest present impediments to 
teaching." An expert accountant responsible for ex- 
plaining the annual expenditure of millions of dollars 
calls it academic and theoretical to demand school sta- 
tistics. So far as these criticisms refer to the kind of 
statistics generally used in discussing school subjects, 
they are well founded. So far as they refer to an in- 
telligent, up-to-date use of the statistical method of 
recording school work when it is done, they are ill 
founded. 

The four chief objections to the statistical method 
may be easily answered: First, figures mislead. Sec- 
ond, statistical inquiry inevitably leads to waste of 
time and vigour. Third, you cannot find any unit 
of inquiry and comparison. Fourth, you cannot test 
education and character by figures. 



Why Figures Mislead 125 

In answer to the objection that figures mislead, the 
obvious reply is, figures do not talk. They may raise 
questions ; they do not answer questions. They only 
show where the attention of an intelligent mind is 
needed. Figures are not intended to run schools, but 
rather to help earnest men and women to run schools in 
the right direction with a result proportionate to out- 
lay of energy and means. Figures are useful only so 
far as they cause the student, taxpayer, mayor, 
teacher, principal, superintendent and director to ask 
questions regarding the efficiency of themselves and of 
one another. A school officer once said, "It is ob- 
viously false to assume that two schools of the same 
cubic dimensions should burn the same amount of coal." 
That a difference of 100% or 300% in the amount of 
coal burned was natural, he illustrated from his own 
experience: "Last year I lived in a congested dis- 
trict, houses all about me, and burned five tons 
of coal. This year I lived in an exposed spot with 
no houses about me, and I burned fifteen tons of coal." 
"Suppose for sake of argument that the two school 
buildings are of the same area, are side by side in the 
same congested district, should they then burn about 
the same amount of coal?" "No. The figures would 
still be misleading, because there is a difference in jani- 
tors, a difference in grates, a difference in furnaces and 
a difference in coal." Whereupon the believer in 
modern bookkeeping methods asked, "Is it not a fit 
subject of inquiry whether the difference of 300% is 



126 School Efficiency 

due to janitor, grate, furnace or coal?" Less than 
two years after this dialogue the supplies committee 
of the schools in question are spending $50,000 less 
for coal, although coal is higher and nearly 200,000 
seats have been added to the space to be heated. If 
official reports ask questions that tell only a part of 
the teacher's story as to her efficiency, the fault is with 
those who prescribe the record. To correct padded 
records, take out the padding. If primary grades are 
compared with grammar grades, sort them properly 
and compare schools only with others struggling with 
the same grade and the same problems. If statistics 
mislead, it is the fault not of the statistics but of the 
mind that compiled them and other minds that inter- 
pret them. A false judgment can be corrected better 
by facts than by any number of guesses. The argu- 
ment that it is better to be ignorant rather than run 
the risk of mis-using statistics reminds me of a little 
Irishman once encountered in Galway leading an able- 
bodied horse. When asked why he did not ride, he re- 
plied, "An if I did, shur'n I might fall off." 

The second objection, that the use of school statis- 
tics leads inevitably to waste of time and energy and 
to multiplication of red tape, is not serious. If there 
is such a tendency it is easy for the board of di- 
rectors, the superintendent and the principals to be 
on their guard to check it. There is no more reason 
for allowing statistics to be impractical than for 
permitting evening schools, commercial geography, 



School Statistics Should Save Time V2fl 

manual training or history to waste time and energy. 
Teachers now feel, it is true, that altogether too much 
of their time is required in answering and re-answer- 
ing needless questions. Every mention of a new record 
causes a united protest from these lovers of childhood, 
who are unwilling to prostitute their interest by doing 
mere clerical work. But it must be remembered that 
this opposition comes from teachers who are not made 
to see the bearing of this clerical work upon the prog- 
ress of their children or upon their own development. 
On the contrary they have been taught that statistics 
are not to save labour, not to guide intelligence, not to 
show needs, but merely to furnish superlatives for 
those who "show off" a school and its officers. Be- 
cause school trustees and superintendents have not 
put the results of clerical labour to noble use by pre- 
venting unnecessary work on the part of the teacher, 
and thus removing obstacles and handicaps in her 
school, she has not learned that figures are symbols 
as worthy of attention as children themselves. As a 
rule the time now spent on copying figures that tell no 
story would be more than ample to fill out adequate 
records. Two school clerks were explaining the im- 
practicability of keeping records so as to show ac- 
curately in what schools and in what grades there were 
more pupils than sittings. When asked how long 
it would take them, working full time, to get this in- 
formation from their present records, they responded, 
"Oh, a month at least." "But if the sittings and 



128 School Efficiency 

pupils were given by grades on the original blanks 
that come to you, would it then require a month?" 
The man replied, "Oh, no, that would be very easy." 
The woman spoke up promptly, "It wouldn't either, 
we would still have to add up all those columns." We 
then asked, "Supposing, for sake of argument, that 
each principal returned the number of sittings and the 
number of pupils for each grade and in another column 
the deficiency or surplus of sittings for that grade, 
would it then take long?" "It would be just as easy 
as it is now." Whether teacher or clerk should add 
columns is a matter of detail to be decided in each 
school. It is quite conceivable that in your city or 
county we could prove that it would be cheaper to 
hire clerks to do all of the statistical work than to 
pay the present penalty for neglected truants, de- 
ficient children, insufficient sittings and for school 
opportunities wasted for want of information. Where- 
ever a teacher is doing clerical work that she considers 
waste of time, a business doctor is needed either by 
that teacher herself, and perhaps by her principal 
and superintendent, or by her school board. 

The objection that there are no units of inquiry and 
comparison in school experience has already been 
answered. In the list of questions given is not one 
for which a unit cannot be found. The unitless age has 
not yet arrived. The curriculum and the child's day 
are full of units of inquiry. The teacher never ceases 
to be a unit worthy of inquiry ; while supplies, build- 



Can Statistics Test Results? 129 

ings, unused text-books, salaries, wasted clerical 
labour, sickness of children, backward pupils, failure 
to win promotion, "make up" of annual reports fur- 
nish as many countable units as may be found in any 
business. 

The final objection that you cannot test education 
and character by figures sounds very convincing from 
the platform or across the dinner table, but as a matter 
of fact education means little, character means little, 
except as each is registered in definite acts committed 
or definite powers attained. There is not a school in 
the United States, not even a school for the feeble 
minded, that does not every day impose one or more 
tests, more or less adequate, both of education and of 
character. What does promotion mean but that chil- 
dren of the fifth grade have while there acquired 
powers enabling them to learn topics taught in the 
sixth grade? 

A child reached should mean a child benefited. A 
child demoted or a child who fails to win promotion 
is a unit reached but not benefited in proportion to 
outlay. To go on ignoring the children who fail to 
win promotion without demanding an explanation, 
without challenging our educational method, is to do 
those children a positive injury. It may be that we 
are also robbing the promoted child of benefits he 
might derive were the weaknesses of the educational 
system removed. If the purpose of manual training 
is to cultivate powers of observation, precision, manual 



130 School Efficiency 

dexterity, is there no objective evidence in a class cf 
fifty as to those who are progressing in powers of con- 
centration, in precision and in manual dexterity ? Un- 
less these powers show in some other branch of study 
than in manual training itself, if the child is not able 
to concentrate his mind on history or geography, if 
he is not able to observe accurately a plant or animal 
or condition of the street, if he is not more efficient 
as a wage earner and a citizen, can we still maintain 
that manual training has developed powers in that 
individual? Whether he can describe accurately, 
whether he can concentrate his attention on history or 
geography, whether he is industrially efficient, can be 
ascertained. Any educational policy that must for- 
ever be supported by belief, not fact, is either too ex- 
pensive a luxury for a democracy to indulge in or too 
insignificant to worry about. Any policy that the 
best theory justifies, facts will also justify and figures 
describe, classify, count, compare and summarise. 
Most of the things I have heard cited as beyond sta- 
tistical analysis refer to social virtues for which the 
school shares responsibility with home, church, busi- 
ness and playground, but for which the school is seek- 
ing chief if not sole credit. 

If all the facts that it has been found worth while 
to gather in some part of the United States were put 
together in one table, we should have a model schedule 
that could answer emphatically, in words of educators 
themselves, all charges that statistics are futile, mis- 



Need For a Model Schedule 131 

leading and wasteful. The Washington schools learn 
the number who go forward from the first year to the 
second year, third and fourth for each high school. 
A similar table was compiled for New York schools, 
but not published for fear it would hurt the feelings 
of those principals whose methods caused the highest 
mortality ; the highest percentage of survival being 
in those schools where promotion is by subject and not 
by grade. Philadelphia's school census gives clearly 
by wards children of school age, children of com- 
pulsory school age, children out of school and children 
who need watching at the critical ages 18, 14 and 15. 
Detroit knows for one grade of each high school why 
children drop out, whether for sickness, change of 
residence, indifference, work. Baltimore and Mil- 
waukee have particularly valuable tables on coal con- 
sumption. Chicago's report on night schools is sug- 
gestive and the report on the relation of curriculum to 
vitality of school children is worthy of universal read- 
ing. Chicago and St. Louis compare school with 
school as to attendance, promotion and important ele- 
ments of expense. New York tells the result of exam- 
inations in all subjects in all high schools. Newark's 
truancy tables are helpful, as is Boston's graphic 
showing of mortality of pupils from the first grade 
register, 13,900, to the fifth grade, 8,600, ninth grade, 
4,500, and fourth-year high school, 549. Cleveland 
leads, probably, in financial summary tables, and in 
general workmanship of annual reports. Elizabeth, 



132 School Efficiency 

N. J., is the home of records that facilitate and justify 
flexible grading, promotion when ready, individualisa- 
tion of pupils. The State of Utah reports the num- 
ber who fail for each school, while Connecticut ranks 
her schools according to school enumeration, average 
attendance, cost based on school population, cost based 
on attendance, cost based on enrolment, — a prin- 
ciple that might well be copied and extended by 
every state and city. Many state and city reports 
employ diagrams, summaries, percentages. Notable 
studies have been published by Teachers College com- 
paring administrative statistics. If we could only get 
in all reports the best in each! 

A composite of best methods now used with sugges- 
tions for practical application of the statistical method 
to school problems is submitted by the New York Com- 
mittee on Physical Welfare of School Children. 1 This 
study includes also some false syntax in reporting: 
( 1 ) Washington will be asked why it does not show the 
survival for primary and grammar grades as well as 
for high schools. (2) Detroit to show why children 
drop out of primary and grammar grades and of all 
high school grades. (3) New York to publish its tables 
of survival, preserving the feelings of the least efficient 
by showing them how to become efficient. (4) Eliza- 
beth to publish reports showing in how far its flexible 
grading is applied and with what effect upon school 
mortality. (5) It is pointed out that Connecticut's 

] Room 215, 105 East 22nd Street, New York City. 



Uniform School Report 133 

system of ranking would be vastly more useful if the 
starting point were school population and not alpha- 
bet. As now printed, comparable cities are not near to 
each other, hence the result of the ranking is lost. 
(6) In New York City a census of backward pupils 
is taken on June 30th, probably the least typical of 
all days of the school year. It requires just as much 
energy on the part of the teacher to take this census 
June 30th as to take it October 1st. In the one case 
the condition cannot be corrected and the teacher re- 
ceives no benefit from passing on information to head- 
quarters to be published from six to eight months 
afterwards. In the other case headquarters would ob- 
tain the information at a time when it could act 
promptly to correct the conditions exposed (160,000 
from two to six years behind their proper grade in 
1905); and the teacher would see that as a result 
of her effort her own work was made easy, her own 
pupils happier, her school more efficient. If the 
original records are properly classified, monthly 
reports will keep the census up to date, a constant 
reminder to school officers of one of their gravest 
problems. 

(7) The United States Bureau of Education gives a 
comparative table of school population for different 
states which is of little use because the ages given, 4 to 
18, 5 to 20, 4 to 16, are not the same for all states, 
and further because the ages 17 to 20 are of no more 
practical significance in discussing school problems 



134 School Efficiency 

than the ages 70 to 90. Likewise, to put in one table 
facts regarding elementary schools, high schools, 
country school and graded schools answers no practical 
question. Many school censuses fail to classify chil- 
dren according to the purpose for which they are 
counted. In New York State, for example, the present 
classification jumbles together 4 to 7, 8 to 16, 
those sub j ect and those not sub j ect to compulsory edu- 
cation and to child labour laws. The only use for the 
ages 4 to 5 is to show the number eligible to kindergar- 
ten; the ages 6 to 7 indicate those for whom school 
privileges should be provided; the ages 8 to 13 give 
those who must be in school, no matter what their stand- 
ing, their birth or privileges, unless they are excused 
because of ill health or physical incapacity. Ages 14 
and 15 should be kept distinct, as they represent 
children who ought normally to be free from the com- 
pulsory education law, but who, because of defective 
training, should be in school and not at work. Ages 16 
and 17, except for those who happen to be in school, 
are of absolutely no interest unless accompanied by 
facts throwing light upon their employment, return 
from that employment and efficiency of their previous 
training in school. Simply to tabulate a list of chil- 
dren out of school who have nothing whatever to do 
with compulsory education and will never want to go 
to school is waste of time. These defects in the state 
schedules were corrected by New York City in 1906, 
when it adopted a condensed tabular form illustrated 









! i 








• ■PMMMPMPM ■.■;■ .<•..•..••.. ■ ■;..•-. . ■ 












3MA 



Manhattan 
Serial Number 



Division Number. 
School District. 



THE CITY OF NEW YORK 

Department of Education 

Third Biennial Census 

OCTOBER, 1906 



For Children 
Over 10 



Street Number 



. H. | R. H. 



NAME OF STREET 



loor Occupied 



last 
birthday 



WHOLE HOUSE 



ONE IN PARENTAL RELATION 



FATHER'S 

Name 



Other 

Relatives. 

Name 



9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 



Is Child Crippled 



Deaf 



Jan Feb Mar Apr May JunIjul Aug Sep Oct 



Dumb 



Phys'ly III 



Ment-ly III 



Other 



IN SCHOOL 

Public Kindergarten 



of P. S. No. 



Public Elementary school 



of P. S. No- 



Public High School 



Public Truant School 



Public Evening School 



of P. S. No, 



Parochial School 



Name of Street 



Private School 



Private Institution 



Name 



Public Institution 



Is Child Working for Wages out of School Hours ? 



OUT OF SCHOOL 

WORKING Factory 



How Long Has Child Been Working i 



00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 



I 2 Yrs. I ; 



50 4.00 4.50 5.00 5.50 6.00 6.50 7.00 



NOT WORKING 



REASON GIVEN 



Where 
Was Child 
Born? 



United States 



Can Child Read or Write English ? 



Can Child Read or Write.aj^yJ^anguagei. 



Yes 



No 



Date-October. 



•SHIELD NO. 

•NAME OF ENUMERATOR. 



Committee m Physical Welfare of School Children. 
N. V. Child Labor Committee. 



1 Altered or Omitted. See Final Blank. 



.H >fl 






■ 






■ 









' 



; 
. . 
J< 



JOOH08 -:■ .■ 



" • I 



H MOiCIV 












' 


. 






• 


. 



: 



- 



Work for Volunteer Associations 135 

by the accompanying schedule, which carries the idea 
beyond school to employment. 

Facts are needed for volunteer educational associa- 
tions as well as for school officials. The attempt to 
give schools the benefit of "intelligent outside criti- 
cism" has succeeded in proportion as outsiders have 
applied efficiency tests to their own inquiries and to 
their use of the results. A program basing judgment 
on fact has been adopted by the New York Committee 
on Physical Welfare of School Children. This Com- 
mittee is composed of men and women who have de- 
sired to know certain countable, measurable facts. 
Most of the original investigations and the work of 
the clearing house are conducted by paid secretaries, 
giving their entire time to the following program : 

1. Study of the Physical Welfare of School Children 

(a) Examination of board of health records of 
children needing medical, dental or ocular care, 
and better nourishment. 

(b) Home visitation of such children, in order to 
ascertain whether their need arises from deficient 
income or from other causes. 

(c) Effort to secure proper treatment, either 
from parents, or from free clinics or other es- 
tablished agencies. 

(d) Effort to secure proper physical surround- 
ings of children while at school, — playgrounds, 
baths, etc. 



136 School Efficiency 

2. Effort to secure establishment of such a system 
of school records and reports 

as will disclose automatically significant school 
facts, — e. g. regarding backward pupils, 
truancy, regularitj' of attendance, registered 
children not attending, sickness, physical de- 
fects, etc. 

3. Effort to utilise available information regarding 

school needs 

so as to stimulate public interest and thus aid in 

securing adequate appropriations to meet school 

needs. 

One ingredient of school efficiency is usually lacking, 
namely, desire to know. It is a simple matter to select 
units of inquiry and comparison, to compute frac- 
tions, to count the number of children or desks, to pro- 
vide the denominator, learn the percentage and obtain 
light as to matters needing attention. Several groups 
of New York principals have recently formulated 
a card record calling for facts that some day every 
school will be expected to answer, as to the child's 
pedagogical and physical progress during school life. 
Several principals are already using similar cards to 
test the efficiency of their teachers and their schools. 
In their brief supporting a simplified record on the 
loose sheet that can be used over and over again 
throughout the child's experience and that lends itself 
to a speedy classification, these principals state em- 
phatically that at present a great proportion of 
teachers' time and principals' time is wasted in re- 



Opportunities of State Boards 137 

writing facts from book to book, without appreciable 
benefit to the schools and without making the informa- 
tion available when next called for by headquarters. 
Just what cards should be adopted in a particular 
school, whether the teacher or principal or clerk should 
fill out this card, whether carbon duplicates should be 
kept, whether records should be in ink or pencil, are 
matters of technical detail to be settled within each 
school. What the school world needs more than any- 
thing else is to put down in black and white the things 
it expects the school to do. Given a question in the 
mind of teacher or taxpayer, a business doctor or sys- 
tem manufacturer will produce ready-made cards 
properly ruled and headed to elicit and classify the 
necessary facts. 

Much has been accomplished for rural communities 
by state boards of education which have demanded in- 
formation that the communities themselves have not at 
first desired to know. The educational possibilities of 
these state clearing houses are vast. Each school may 
be made to see itself as others see it and to compare 
the proportion of its pupils who obtain state certifi- 
cates with that of rival schools. As a matter of self- 
defence it will try to explain differences in percentage 
of absence, truancy, promotion. Most state reports 
have hitherto failed to bring out significant questions 
with regard to promotions, failure to win promotion, 
percentage of absences. In a word, the state superin- 
tendents have not made such use of tables that teachers 



138 School Efficiency 

themselves realise how much energy may be saved by 
systematically recording their daily routine. They 
have not yet given to the weakest teacher the system 
of the strongest. 

Much as has been done by the National Bureau of 
Education, it is a mere bagatelle compared with the 
opportunity. It is no exaggeration to say that the Na- 
tional Bureau of Education has greater possibilities, 
if properly supported, than any other — yes, any five 
— single educational agencies in the United States. 
The United States Commissioner of Education should 
have in his possession more valuable data with regard 
to the forces that make for intelligence, industry and 
health and the forces that make for ignorance, shift- 
lessness and disease than any other intelligence centre 
in the world. Yet this great nation, embarrassed by 
prosperity, gives but a beggarly sum for the support 
of this department, whose head receives only $4,000 a 
year, — less than headmasters of private schools or 
even superintendents in small cities. The bureau itself 
has always been most unpopular with the Congres- 
sional Ways and Means Committee. So little does the 
country expect from it that when a National Children's 
Bureau was projected, it was taken for granted that 
the Bureau of Education could not effectually study 
the conditions affecting child welfare. Instead of har- 
nessing 500,000 school-teachers to the crusade against 
child abuse and child neglect, it is proposed to estab- 
lish an independent bureau with one chief investigator 




U. S. BUREAU OF EDUCATION 

Potentially the greatest factor for increasing school efficiency 
in the United States, said now to be the least popular, as it is 
probably the most inadequately supported bureau of the national 
government. 



Opportunities of National Bureau 139 

and a handful of assistants. In November, 1906, a 
movement was started to secure a re-definition of the 
purpose of the National Bureau of Education, to give 
that bureau a comprehensive program, to add child 
study to its functions, and to secure Congressional 
recognition and appropriations commensurate with its 
opportunity. When we desire to know a small part 
of the information that the National Bureau of Edu- 
cation is in position to obtain, interest in child study 
may be sent by way of state superintendents, county 
superintendents, city superintendents to teachers 
throughout the land, as government time is now tele- 
graphed to the remotest village. The little red school- 
house will be told over and over again that it is part 
of a national movement to develop efficient citizens ; 
it will be told of its own efficiency or inefficiency, 
and inspired to adopt for itself methods proved to be 
most successful by schools working under similar con- 
ditions. If Wisconsin's facts show that a central 
school in one township is cheaper and more efficient 
than a number of small schoolhouses, Nebraska and 
Pennsylvania will receive stimulus from a central 
clearing house to consolidate its township schools. 
The head of the national clearing house will be recog- 
nised, so that in the future our Presidents will not ac- 
cept the resignation of one commissioner and appoint 
a successor without the country knowing that a new 
leader is to be selected. 
If it be said that the Children's Bureau should be 



140 School Efficiency 

independent of the Bureau of Education because in- 
tended to study questions apart from education, such 
as infant mortality, child labour, children's diseases, 
it may be answered that the interest of the efficient 
educator to-day goes far beyond so-called education. 
Nothing that pertains to the child, child health and 
child efficiency is beyond either the interest or the 
responsibility of the efficient teacher. Such subjects 
as can be better studied by a National Board of Health 
or by the Department of Commerce and Labour would 
be too vast for the small Children's Bureau proposed. 
Can we afford clearing houses for school informa- 
tion? There are those who hesitate to divert funds 
from strictly educational purposes to accounting sys- 
tems that would answer, automatically and continu- 
ously, significant questions with regard to school prog- 
ress and school needs. New York is not the only city 
of which it can be proved conclusively that for every 
dollar required for such intelligence $100 or $1,000 
is now being wasted ; — in treating crime that might be 
prevented through efficient public schools ; in suffer- 
ing the competition of defective industrial agents who 
might have been made more efficient in the public 
school; in building and supporting truancy schools 
that would be unnecessary if the truth were told about 
the enforcement of the compulsory education law ; in 
paying physicians and inspectors of infectious dis- 
ease ; in building and maintaining hospitals that would 
not be necessary if the truth regarding the physical 



Intelligence . Prevents Waste 141 

welfare of school children were promptly detected and 
promptly utilised. New York City is willing to spend 
$30 yearly on a child in the elementary schools, or 
$80 on a child in the high schools, yet many feel that 
to spend one-fifth of one cent per child in taking a 
school census, so as to make sure that no child is being 
deprived of its right to educational and industrial ef- 
ficiency, is an extravagant use of taxpayers' money. 
As a business proposition it is true the world over that 
wherever there is a large outlay it is worth while to 
spend enough on intelligence to prevent waste. Intel- 
ligence should be regarded not as an extravagance or 
indulgence, but rather as a protection against fire, ac- 
cident or disease. It is true of our American schools 
that an adequate system of bookkeeping and records 
would disclose waste in construction of buildings, in 
supplies, in service, in children's time, in opportunity, 
vastly exceeding the expenditure necessary for bring- 
ing to light such waste. 



VIII 

Efficiency in Charitable Work 

If Robert M. Hartley had been mobbed while ex- 
pounding the domestic and industrial reasons for tem- 
perance ; if he had suffered persecution from the ven- 
ders of distillery milk whose nefarious traffic he 
destroyed; or endured ostracism at the hands of 
gentlefolk for condemning their disease-breeding tene- 
ments, it would probably not be necessary to remind 
the twentieth century what he was and why we are in- 
debted to him for benefactions that multiply in im- 
portance as civic problems are better understood. Few 
lives illustrate more clearly how accidental is fame and 
how disproportionate to service rendered humanity. 
There is such a thing as doing one's work so well as to 
make the heroic seem easy, as being so successful in 
winning the co-operation of one's age that the signifi- 
cance of a leader's personality is obscured by the insti- 
tutions and movements resulting from his labour. 
Such seems to have been the case with Robert M. Hart- 
ley, leader of two generations in constructive social 
work. 

Equal energy concentrated upon politics or business 
would have won pre-eminence among the country's 
statesmen and financiers. Lesser abilities have fre- 



Hartley a Helpful Example 143 

quently gained fame and riches from the practice of 
law. If he had given at any one time one-hundredth 
part of what others have given to support work in- 
augurated by him, he would be mentioned with Pea- 
body, Girard, Cooper and other public benefactors of 
his day. Had he explained how to teach the child in- 
stead of how to give it strength and ambition to learn, 
written on race suicide instead of preventable infant 
mortality, compiled and digested in one volume the 
essays, articles, addresses and reports of fifty years of 
social work, his writings would be widely known. If 
his effort had followed instead of paralleling that of 
the abolitionist, our generation of social workers would 
have canonised him. Unknown as he is, however, to 
most of the earnest men and women who are now striv- 
ing to guide their communities toward higher ground, 
his career epitomises in a helpful degree the motives 
and methods upon which successful charitable work in 
our own time must rely. 

Hartley's greatness is of the comforting kind that 
every village and city in the land may reasonably hope 
to produce. When at the age of thirty (1825) he 
came to New York, he was neither a genius nor a para- 
gon. On the contrary one suspects that he bored old 
and young alike with his apt quotations from scrip- 
ture and philosophy, as with his rustic notions about 
the moral life and the Christian's duty to talk about 
it. While the vocabulary of his age did not permit 
him to be strenuous, he was ripe for the complete es- 



144 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

pousal of the creed enunciated in that decade 
by Garrison, — "As harsh as truth and as uncom- 
promising as justice." In fact he was quite the 
honest, vigorous, somewhat opinionated, consciously 
moral man that is every day leaving the country 
for a city career. Just the type of man that would 
promptly identify himself with a city church 
and dutifully answer a call for workers to spread 
leaflets among the unchurched poor, — his first social 
work. 

If you have ever distributed religious tracts among 
the very sinful of the very poor, you know how un- 
satisfactory is that method of stirring their moral na- 
tures. Hartley found a surprisingly large number 
of men and women who, even if able to read his leaflet, 
were sure to destroy it or carry it back to some saloon. 
Although without a very keen sense of humour, he 
could not fail to be impressed with the unequal chance 
his leaflet had under such circumstances, — a tract is 
so unaggressive and fugitive, a saloon so aggressive 
and insistent in its educational effort. Hartley worked 
hard and consecutively, therefore one discouraging im- 
pression had not faded before another of the same kind 
left its mark upon his brain, the second was quickly 
followed by the third, the fiftieth registered soon after 
the twenty-fifth. Had these impressions been fewer in 
number, had they been distributed over a very long 
period so that each could be erased before the next was 
registered, Hartley's mind would probably have failed 



Hartley as Temperance Agitator 145 

to discover their similarity and their lesson, i. e., — Un- 
der ordinary circumstances a brain befogged with alco- 
hol cannot see the gospel; to dispel or weaken the 
power of alcohol will remove one serious obstacle to 
a man's redemption. 

Thus it was that the distributor of religious tracts 
was led into a fight against intemperance. Having 
chosen this starting point Hartley took account of 
stock, an inventory, or as we say in social work, a cen- 
sus. In fact he was forever taking censuses, counting 
and comparing his own resources and those of his ad- 
versary, whether that was a person, habit, prejudice, 
disease or set of conditions. Saloons, breweries, dis- 
tilleries, quantity and value of beverages manufac- 
tured, imported or consumed — arrests, convictions 
and sentences for drunkenness, percentage of all crimi- 
nals addicted to alcohol — reasons cited in defence of 
moderate drinking — persons and classes who had 
pecuniary interest in continuing intemperance — these 
were listed face to face with the forces arrayed against 
intemperance, i. e., home and industrial reasons for 
total abstinence, personal and class motives that might 
be used against saloons. With armour as impenetrable 
as the facts of his time permitted, he led the battle for 
the City Temperance Society, which in ten years se- 
cured pledges from 167,000 persons, distributing in 
one year 30,000,000 pages of argument — an average 
of 100 pages for every man, woman and child in the 
city. In addition the press helped with news space 



146 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

and editorials, not because he besought their co-opera- 
tion, not because the editors of his day subscribed to 
total abstinence, but because he set up an ideal that all 
must approve and expressed it in such a readable and 
stimulating wa}' that the papers could not afford to 
reject his letters. One fact was always worth a dozen 
guesses to him. Therefore, instead of imagining the 
point of view of those who seemed to disagree with him, 
he sought personal interviews with drunkard, saloon 
keeper, manufacturer, pastor, editor, mayor, legis- 
lator. He obtained audience because he granted the 
others' sincerity and assumed that only failure to pre- 
sent the facts of his own cause adequately could pre- 
vent mutual understanding and agreement. Argu- 
ment and plea started from fact, practically the only 
antidote he ever tried for mis-information. The manu- • 
facturer and bartender were shown facts proving, as 
he believed, that the majority of their trade failed ; the 
pastor was made to see that the poor drunkard could 
not be morally awakened by a man who considered in- 
temperance compatible with Christian living. The 
immigrant was persuaded by evidence before his eyes 
that whatever might have seemed possible in his Euro- 
pean home, he could not in this country "indulge in the 
free use of strong drink without risk of health, loss 
of character, wreck of fortune and happiness." In- 
cidentally the rural legislator was rebuked in 1839, as 
he was by others in 1906, for attempting to force 
liquor laws upon New York City, "thus defying the 



Hartley 's* Fight for Pure Milk 147 

first essential of successful legislation, the consent of 
the people concerned." 

The desire to speak from personal knowledge of the 
other man's interest led him to visit distillers at their 
work. Near one factory he found "in low flat pens 
over 500 milch cows closely huddled together, inhu- 
manly condemned to subsist on slops smoking hot from 
the stills." He wondered what sort of milk "this un- 
natural, disgusting" food produced. Now, with Hart- 
ley desire to know was always followed by attempt to 
learn, while facts discovered led promptly to action, 
adapted in kind and duration to the human need dis- 
closed. Instead of being amused by the fact that the 
distillers "would not risk the lives of their own families 
by using the produce of their own dairies," he was dis- 
turbed and promptly traced this milk to 25,000 tene- 
ment babies. True to his census-taking proclivities or 
convictions, he examined the physical condition of 
these babies and discovered "a frightful waste of hu- 
man material." New York's tenement babies had died 
at a continually increasing rate from 1814 to 1841, 
the increase keeping pace with the practice of feeding 
cows on distillery refuse. This indication that the 
refuse was a factor in the increased death rate was 
confirmed by the fact that in the same period the mor- 
tality of babies in other large cities here and abroad 
had decreased 50%. Lest this statistical judgment 
should be at fault, he examined with a chemist's help 
the ingredients of "still" milk and found it lacking in 



148 Efficiency in Chaiitable Work 

food value, entirely unfit for human consumption. 
fi Having satisfied himself that the facts were indis- 
putable" he lectured, wrote essays and articles, pre- 
pared a book (1841) thus giving others at once in- 
formation that had cost him months to secure, compiled 
a handbook for dairymen and farmers showing not 
only what to feed, but what conditions to provide for 
the production of milk, and continued to fight for 
twenty years, until model milk shops took the place of 
wagons from the still, until dairy conditions improved 
in response to universal demand, and until the State 
Legislature (1864) enacted laws prohibiting the traffic 
in impure milk. Religion — intemperance — distillery 
profits — distillery cows — distillery milk — undernour- 
ished baby victims — publicity — helpful suggestions as 
to production — legal safeguards obtained by people 
concerned — Hartley believed that each link in the 
thought chain belonged to the public, and was in fact 
true only when appropriated and applied by the public 
for its own protection. 

Once having examined critically the infant mortality 
of a city or state, no one is ever able again to concen- 
trate attention upon religious and temperance tracts. 
Behind drunkenness and irreligion Hartley found squa- 
lor, disease and ignorance that the community could 
prevent, but before which the immigrant mother and 
father were helpless even when religious and tem- 
perate. How could they in their environment picture 
the ideals he painted of health, comfort, cleanliness, 



Choosing a Society's Name 149 

rest, strength, progress and the other joys resulting 
from a temperate, God-fearing life? How could he 
learn to speak their language, where discover a solid 
ground from which to help them, and to seem to be 
looking at their problem with their eyes ? Determined 
to get behind and beneath the causes that engendered 
alcoholism and other social evils, he organised in 1843 
an association to go to the poor prepared to give not a 
rebuke or a tract, but help fitted to their need, be that 
coal, bread, protection against transmissible disease, 
or opportunity to be clean and to become efficient in 
self-support. Not the least of Hartley's services was 
the naming of this new endeavour, the New York As- 
sociation for Improving the Condition of the Poor. 
In these later days when the telephone has set a 
premium on short names, there is a tendency to sacri- 
fice purpose for brevity and there are those who pub- 
licly and privately condole with "the society with the 
long name." But it should be remembered that this 
name was intended to be descriptive both of the scope 
and of the method of conducting social work. It rep- 
resents not chance or euphony, but a purpose, supply- 
ing in itself an objective test, the efficiency test of 
work conducted : 

ASSOCIATION — a group of contributors working 
together on the basis of common motive ; IMPROV- 
ING — the combined effort of associated individuals 
not to remonstrate, not to tear down, but to improve ; 
CONDITION — that which is to be improved is not 



150 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

a chance individual or emergent situation here and 
there, but the environment and disabilities that make 
for poverty and vice; POOR — those whose involun- 
tary handicaps and restricted opportunities furnish 
the best criterion of conditions that call for improve- 
ment, 

Starting with districts in which the poor lived, with 
conditions that could be counted and compared, Hart- 
ley and his colleagues took census after census; con- 
trasted achievement with needs unsupplied; began a 
crusade for better housing ; mapped the city's plague 
spots ; pointed out the neglected child, stimulated the 
organisation of societies for its protection and care, 
obtained a compulsory education law and truant offi- 
cers ; founded two dispensaries ; started a wash house 
and bathing establishment; erected model tenements; 
conducted a fierce campaign for hygiene and sanita- 
tion through popular lectures and the press ; counted 
the crippled children tucked away in tenement corners, 
abused and regarded with suspicious dread even by 
their own; established a hospital for their treatment; 
secured legislation prohibiting the adulteration and 
traffic in impure milk ; organised protection against 
cholera; projected improvements in city markets; 
tested the colonisation theory of moving the denizens 
of the slum to the country by investigating several 
thousand parents. What a record! The reason why 
its equal cannot be found in the annals of social and 
charitable work is this, that for the first twenty years 



Hartley Worked From Fact to Theory 151 

of its existence the hundreds of men who co-operated 
with Mr. Hartley and his board of managers worked 
from fact to theory, and concentrated their atten- 
tion not upon some one personality, not upon social 
standing, not upon being good, not upon one organisa- 
tion, but upon an objective, efficiency test, — namely: 
streets, cellars, garrets, sick babies and stranded immi- 
grants. 

Hartley's experience in relief work, however, proves 
the defects of the goodness test, as his constructive 
work illustrates his use of the efficiency test. During 
his early days he was always looking for work left un- 
done, for proof that his efforts were repaid. His 
energies waned as his years and the volume and detail 
of office work increased. His relief methods failed to 
keep pace with the needs of the growing city. In 
other words, in 1865, after twenty years of unsur- 
passed efficiency as educator, he tended to fall back 
upon the protestation test that as religious zealot he 
brought with him to New York in 1825. It is interest- 
ing to conjecture what might have been accomplished 
had Hartley's brilliant educational genius applied it- 
self to winning over his generation to an efficiency test 
of relief work. With three hundred volunteers chosen 
from the city's business and professional men, he could 
have accomplished wonders. As a matter of fact, he 
applauded their desire to do good and closed his eyes 
to the fact that the poor man and the rich man were 
no longer neighbours who could exchange visits after 



152 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

supper. He continued to use volunteer visitors who 
could not and would not visit, where the signs of the 
time pointed to paid visitors always on duty. When 
money should have been raised — and could have been 
raised on the record of the Association, for an efficient 
paid staff to do the increasing work of the city, he 
— like others since his day — used his brilliant powers 
to persuade the community that there is some special 
merit in volunteer work even though the work itself 
is ineffective. When others protested that it was not 
organising the resources of the city properly or that 
its methods did not prevent unwise and demoralising 
charity, the Association replied not with a candid ex- 
amination of its work in all parts of the city, but with 
selected illustrations of good work and Christian spirit 
intended to overwhelm opposition. At the critical mo- 
ment, when the comparison of what it could do and 
ought to do with what it actually was doing, might 
have led to an increase in resources for charitable and 
educational work, it openly resented criticism. It thus 
made expedient, if not necessary, the Charity Organ- 
isation Society, which started in 1881 about where the 
Association began in 184,3. The resources of the city 
were to be better husbanded; societies were to work 
together, not independently ; imposture was to be un- 
masked; volunteers were to bring uptown and down- 
town, mansion and hovel, into brotherly co-operation 
for the latter's uplift. There was no result aimed at 
by the movement of 1881 that was not clearly outlined 



New York Charity Organisation Society 153 

in 1843. The procedure was to be the same, — suffi- 
cient inquiry to ascertain the needs of the applicant 
for relief ; central registration of names and addresses ; 
reports of visits made, relief or other treatment given, 
to be filed at headquarters. 

In two respects the original Charity Organisation 
Society differed materially from the original Associa- 
tion for Improving the Condition of the Poor. In 
order to avoid what its founders regarded as the chief 
cause of the Association's failure to apply the ef- 
ficiency test to its relief work, the new society saw fit 
not to permit the same person to investigate and to 
relieve. It seemed at the time that the recipient could 
not be both morally and materially helped by the same 
friend. It was feared that the giving of food would 
prevent influence of the right kind and would tend to 
demoralise the applicant as well as to obscure the judg- 
ment of the visitor. Therefore the Charity Organisa- 
tion Society constitution declared that the Society 
"would not directly dispense alms in any form, but 
would find out when material relief was needed and 
when it should be discontinued." Secondly, the 
C. O. S. started out with a better system of central 
records of relief, partly because it was to be primarily 
an information centre, and partly because it began in 
a time of more efficient business methods. While the 
Association's first relief card contained practically all 
the information of the original Charity Organisation 
Society, its volunteer visitors failed to obtain the in- 



154 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

formation necessary to fill out the card, and by 1881 
a very crude form was in use. The superiority of the 
more complete card and of the central registration of 
all such cards appealed quickly to the A. I. C. P., 
which gave the C. O. S. its first home. 

From the first, the Charity Organisation Society has 
applied a fact test to the applicant and the efficiency 
test to its theory of relief giving. That is to say, 
it adopted from the first the principle that the treat- 
ment of needy families should be efficient and should 
be judged by results. More recently it has, through 
its Bureau of Minor Charities, offered subscribers 
light upon the goodness of minor charities, and as 
much light upon efficiency as the reports of these minor 
charities make possible. Its magazine, Charities, and 
its School of Philanthropy have held high the standard 
of efficiency and have taught thousands to appreciate 
that "desire to do is not equivalent to ability to do." 
A world-wide reputation has been earned by its success- 
ful educational campaign for the establishment of a 
tenement house department for New York City 
(which has indirectly influenced housing conditions 
throughout the country) and by its initiative in or- 
ganising the National Tuberculosis Committee and the 
National Child Labour Committee. But even this soci- 
ety, brilliant as has been its career, has never applied 
to the execution of its relief theories, to its own em- 
ployes, to its method of raising funds, to its volun- 
teer visitors, to its efforts towards organising the 



Steps in Applying Efficiency Tests 155 

charitable resources of its own city and towards im- 
proving schools and hospitals, or to its annual report, 
such an efficiency test as may be safely copied by other 
societies. 

Because of the conditions just narrated, and because 
recent discussion in the National Conference of Chari- 
ties and Correction has emphasised the financial 
methods of the New York Association for Improving 
the Condition of the Poor, it seems desirable, in treat- 
ing of efficiency in charitable work, to give a candid 
account of the different steps by which this Associa- 
tion has come to apply to itself the efficiency test. Its 
past and present weaknesses are frankly admitted for 
the sake of the good that can be gained by others. 
For ten years it has avowedly and earnestly sought to 
apply, so far as it could learn how, the efficiency test 
to its work and its workers. 

In 1896 the Association had three bookkeepers, one 
for receipts, one for expenditures, and one to review 
the work of the other two. Yet the financial statement 
gave two items only under expenditures (1) Pay- 
ments as per order of the Board of Managers, $8^,61^0. 
(2) Balance on hand, $355. One page of monthly 
payments (unclassified) for each department supple- 
mented this. No one knew what it cost to procure 
funds, whether department officers were economical, 
whether the various practices in giving relief were 
wise or unwise. It was nobody's business to analyse or 
question. There was the general assumption that the 



156 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

work was well done, because it was supposed that 
everybody must want to do good work. Criticism was 
met by two statements: (1) This organisation has 
worked since 1843 and never refused to help a deserv- 
ing person. (2) We can prove that our methods are 
most humane and sympathetic. The same answer is 
the best that can be given by most charitable agencies 
in the United States, when their policies or methods 
are challenged. Not until 1906 did the A. I. C. P., 
the C. O. S. or the United Hebrew Charities effectively 
analyse results of treatment. 

This situation was partly appreciated in 1897 when 
the A. I. C. P. board started out to put its finances 
on a sound business basis. Changes recommended by 
the general agent, Frank Tucker, commended them- 
selves at once to the board and later to the public, as 
well as to certain other charitable societies. One book- 
keeper took the place of three; outgoing and incom- 
ing funds were handled through one desk and one 
ledger; general headings were separated into their 
parts. Where formerly it had been impossible to 
learn the entire expense of any one department of 
work, — or the portion of the total that was used for 
salaries, stationery or coal, — from 1897 on a state- 
ment was made for each department, showing exactly 
how its share of the budget was used. 



Accounting Tests 157 

EXPENDITURES OF GENERAL AGENT'S OFFICE 

For Fiscal Year Commencing October 1, 1897, and Ending 

September 30, 1898 
Salaries. 

Printing and Stationery. 
Postage. 
Library. 

Furniture and Fixtures. 
Expense. 

EXPENDITURES OF DEPARTMENT OF RELIEF 

For Fiscal Year Commencing October 1, 1897, and Ending 

September 30, 1898 
Salaries (Office). 
Salaries (Visitors'). 
Cash for rent, specified disbursements, transportation, and other 

cash items for relief of applicants. 
Groceries. 
Coal. 
Shoes. 

Sewing Bureau. 
Carfares (Visitors'). 

In dispensing relief funds, memory and unclassified 
bills were no longer trusted. Vouchers were required 
to show both purpose and department, and were paid 
only when certified by the one spending the money and 
approved by the general agent. 

Of first importance was the adoption of by-laws 
protecting the treasury against hasty and ill-con- 
sidered action. Receipts are entered in one fund what- 
ever their source. This fund is called the General 
Fund. Against it no one can draw but the treasurer, 



158 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

and he only upon resolution of the board of mana- 
gers. The ledger account for the General Fund shows 
in summary every financial transaction of the year. 
If $10,000 were taken out and put back ten times, the 
General Fund would show $100,000 on both sides of 
the ledger. This account therefore does not of itself 
reflect work done. But the treasurer must explain 
every increase or decrease in this one fund. 

Money taken from the General Fund goes directly 
to one of two other accounts or funds. The three 
funds are kept in different banks, partly because of 
convenience, partly to earn interest and partly to re- 
duce possibility of error and confusion. If money is 
to be paid out to defray current expenses, it goes to 
the account for which the general agent is responsi- 
ble. If it were possible to estimate accurately in ad- 
vance the expenditures for a month, there would never 
be a cent in the Expense Account on the first of 
each month, for the cash to be used in paying the com- 
ing month's bills is not available to the general 
agent until after the first day of the month. For 
every increase or decrease in this current fund the 
general agent must submit a classified explanation, 
which is accepted by the board only after the state- 
ment has been professionally audited. The second 
account that is built up from the General Fund is the 
Reserve Fund, to which go promptly all moneys from 
bequests and all gifts the interest on which only may 
be used. The by-laws do not declare that legacies 



Treatment of Reserve Funds 159 

shall not be used for current purposes, but before they 
may be taken out of the Reserve Fund, paid back to 
the general fund, and thus disbursed in current 
account, there must be a formal vote which always 
means debate. Hence an unwritten law that the Re- 
serve is not to be encroached upon except when justi- 
fied by an emergency. There is nothing, however, to 
prevent any violation of this principle that the board 
is willing to record and publish. 

All changes in the General, Reserve, and Expense 
accounts, are read and explained in detail at each 
monthly board meeting, and published in summary, 
professionally audited, in the annual reports. 

Three other important provisions are made in the 
by-laws: (1) Expenses shall be within the Budget. 
(£) Every department shall meet monthly from Octo- 
ber to June. (3) All matters involving money trans- 
actions shall be reviewed by the Finance Department. 
The budget is a declaration of intention or policy, 
voted in May — a time of full board meeting — to gov- 
ern the year beginning the next October. This is made 
up, not by guessing, but by forecasting with the aid 
of former years' classified experience the probable ex- 
pense of each department during the next year. 
Each department goes over a statement of estimated 
increases or decreases. When it has decided upon 
changes to be recommended to the board, its requests 
go to the Finance Department with explanation. Here 
the various department budgets are compared with one 



160 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

another, and the total proposed expenditure is com- 
pared with the total estimated receipts. If the expen- 
ditures planned exceed the estimated receipts, depart- 
ment estimates are reduced and only so much voted as 
the board has reason to expect, with its present plans, 
it can meet from estimated receipts. These written 
estimates are placed before the board in advance, and 
after consideration the final Annual Budget is voted. 
From that time on for a year, the same counting and 
comparing need not be done again. The budget is 
law and within its specific limits freedom is left to 
committees and executive officers. When expenditures 
are proposed not provided for in the budget, they 
must either wait over for one month or go to the 
board after being formally approved by the Finance 
Department. The board is free to revise its budget 
at any time, or to change its estimate of receipts, or 
to increase the proportion of its Reserve that is to be 
used for emergencies, but the presumption is emphati- 
cally against such action which can be taken only 
after due consideration. 

Thus in 1902 there was an admirable mechanism that 
showed where money went and how it was dispensed. 
The changes since made will indicate the value of a 
system that brings to light weaknesses and discrepan- 
cies, when there is an attitude that welcomes such evi- 
dence as a first means of increasing efficiency. 

A new relief policy was on probation, namely, sub- 
stitution of cash for grocery orders. Visitors had tes- 



m 1-IOm- 



NDEX 



Form I 10m-«! ' 



A. I. C. P. DAILY REPORT OF VISITOR 



CASH GIVEN APPLICfl 



190- 

% 3 \ g§ , 



VOUCHER NO 



Coal 


Med. 























Renl 


Tianv 


Cloth- 


Etc' 


Coal 






Misc. 


Mr'. 

















































































































1 



3 







Testing Work of Relief Visitors 161 

tified that grocery clerks generally discriminated 
against the customer who offered a relief order in pay- 
ment. Following an investigation of the practice in 
other societies, visitors were instructed: — (1) To dis- 
continue where practicable the grocery order; (2) To 
purchase supplies and have them delivered to families ; 
(3) To give cash wherever mothers could be relied upon 
to purchase efficiently. The board believed that this 
change would not only protect the feelings of poor 
women, but would gradually lead visitors to measure 
their relief not by the grocery unit ($.50) and its 
multiples ($1, $1.50, $2), but rather by the family 
unit of things needed to eat. After a short trial sev- 
eral visitors doubted whether the new policy was not a 
mistake. It became important to learn how thor- 
oughly they had tested it. Because no record had 
been kept separating "order" from "purchase" and 
"cash," it was necessary laboriously to sort and count 
the tickets given out by different visitors. It then 
transpired that the doubting visitors had, unknown to 
the supervisors, superintendent, general agent and 
board, failed to carry out the board's instructions. 
Their entries read, $1.50, $2, $3.50, whereas the en- 
tries of those who had followed instructions read, — 
$1.17, $3.24, and $.68. A daily and monthly report 
was immediately prepared that has ever since shown 
amount given in cash, amount purchased by visitor, 
and amount given in grocery orders. The visitor now 
asks, "What eatables does this family need," not "How 



162 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

many $.50 orders shall I give?" A pronounced in- 
crease in efficiency has resulted. 

Each visitor was required to attend to all needy 
families in her district. Every morning one or more 
new applications would come to each visitor requiring 
immediate attention. How should she plan the rest of 
her day? She would go over the 100 names and ad- 
dresses, recall or look up the conditions at the time of 
her last visit, and then select those that were most 
accessible from the neighbourhoods that the new ap- 
plications or urgent engagements made it necessary 
for her to reach during the day. Naturally families 
near main thoroughfares would seem within easy reach 
oftener than families on the edge of her district, — just 
as in tit-tat-too the centre has four chances, the four 
corners have three chances each and the other squares 
have only two. Not infrequently some serious over- 
sight would come to light; a visitor had planned to 
visit the family, but forgot until too late. A prize 
was offered for the best method of insuring that a 
visit would be made not sooner and not later than it 
Was needed. Several plans were submitted and the 
following Daily Pad adopted: 



A Serviceable Daily Check 



163 



9/3 
MONDAY 

5828 C 

4137 9 / 8 

2262 9 /i 4 

1376 y 10 

5210 9 /io 



9/4 
TUESDAY 

2944 9 / 7 

3640 O'Connor 9 /i 3 

5556 Vio 

5863 9 /i7 

6409 C 



9/5 
WEDNESDAY 

2901 9 /i3 

5492 Horan S 9 / 7 
4929 Connaugh 9 / 7 

6113 9 / 8 

6473 9 / 7 



= Visited as planned. Dates = Next visit. 

S = Sewing given, hence not urgent. 

C = Last visit, less important than others. May therefore give way to 

urgent cases. 



9/6 
THURSDAY 
878 Duzenberry 9 / 7 
3187 Ramsdell 9 / 15 
5308 Trautlein 9 / 7 

61 9 /io 

952 9 / 10 



9/7 
FRIDAY 

4660 Seagal 9 / 23 
5538 Kemner 9 /u 

6303 C 

4799 Zenner 9 /i 

3140 y 12 



9/8 
SATURDAY 

2050 McConnon 9 / 23 
385 Burke C 
3500 Allen C 

5616 C 

6858 C 



There was the usual cry against red tape. But the 
visitors soon came to see that they were saved a vast 
amount of tape that was no less red because wasted. 
The energy formerly spent on deciding not to visit a 
family could now be spent on deciding what to do for 
the family visited. After learning that they could 
not keep an orderly pad and do disorderly work, and 
that the little feminine devices to keep up appear- 
ances would be quickly disclosed to the questioning 
supervisor, they stopped trying to make columns even 
by putting names where there was room instead of 
where the family should be visited, and began seri- 



164 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

ously to take advantage of the saving that came from 
system. No name is transferred from one day to an- 
other unless it has been visited. All names unscratched 
indicate, therefore, visits planned but not made. The 
supervising officer can tell by 9.10 every morning what 
work undertaken yesterday was not done. The visitor 
explains the work she failed to do according to plan, 
her records show how she did what was done accord- 
ing to plan, after which both supervisor and visitor 
give their attention to problems of the day at hand. 
The visitor looks over on Monday only those cases that 
she, at the time of her last visit, decided could not be 
put off beyond Monday. At the time the visitor is 
in the home, she decides the interval for which her visit 
has provided. 

This blank quickly became popular. The least or- 
derly mind was given a system better than that pre- 
viously used by the most orderly mind. The energies 
and personal characteristics of both were now concen- 
trated on needy families instead of upon mechanical 
difficulties of reaching or describing those families. 
As rapidly as one visitor makes an improvement in 
this plan it becomes necessary for all visitors to use the 
new labour-saving device. The figures below or 
after the name indicate the date of the next visit. C 
means that nothing is to be done but close the case — 
the visiting or clerical work can therefore be post- 
poned if other engagements are more important. 
Gradually the plan is tried of putting Cs all in one 



Adequate Relief 165 

day, a sort of cleaning up day when all less important 
matter — underbrush and dead-wood — can be cleared 
away. 

Two maximums were in effect in 1902: (1) No visi- 
tor was permitted to spend more than $2 at any one 
visit without previous consent of the supervising offi- 
cer; (2) Who in turn was not permitted to authorise 
more than $20 for any one family during one period 
of dependence without reference to the Relief Depart- 
ment of the Board. Similar provisions are still in 
force in many charitable organisations that work 
through executive or advisory committees. The New 
York Association for Improving the Condition of the 
Poor has abolished both maximums. The visitor is now 
expected to give adequate relief, whether it be 3 cents, 
$3, or $30, promise of work, or again a warning 
before reporting a parent to police authorities. She is 
expected to have the courage of her judgment. 
Whether her judgment is sound is determined by re- 
sults compared with statements of fact as to conditions 
she attempts to relieve. If her decision or judgment 
cannot be improved, it would be a wiser use of her sal- 
ary to pension her than to permit her to continue 
spending sums of less than $2 at a time, — just as 
an operation for adenoids is cheaper at $10, than to 
give cod liver oil at 90 cents a bottle in the hope of 
mitigating mal-nutrition due to adenoids. So with 
the superintendent of relief, it has been found cheaper 
and more efficacious to judge her by works than by 



166 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

any maximum to impose a limit. A system of 
maximums conceals both inefficiency and efficiency; 
the objective test reveals both and shows just where 
weaknesses should be corrected. The board considers 
that it makes no better investment than to give every 
employee a chance to show where his judgment breaks 
down and in how far he is capable, just as it no longer 
fears a flood of applications started by news- 
paper articles telling of its liberal relief policy. 
If it gives indiscriminate relief, it shoulders all the 
blame. 

Maximum salaries have likewise been abolished. 
Workers are paid according to grade of work done. 
As soon as a grade is reached, and this is a matter of 
physical proof, not official opinion, salary goes up au- 
tomatically. No officer can keep a worker from get- 
ting the salary of her grade. There is no longer fear 
or hope of favouritism. The worker keeps her eyes 
on the work, not on her supervising officer. It is ob- 
viously not possible under this system for one worker 
to be paid $10 more than her colleagues receive for 
doing the same or perhaps more and superior work. 
Tenure does not count apart from value of service. 
Visitors who fall below grade are asked to seek work 
where they can be efficient. Every worker is urged to 
earn promotion in salary, the board consistently wel- 
coming opportunity to recognise increased efficiency 
by increased salary ; for example, a salary inducement 
is offered to visitors who can do their own work so ac- 



Tests of Supervision 167 

curatelj that a supervisor will not be needed to correct 
and close their records. 

This principle has led to a change in the relation of 
visitor to supervisor. Formerly the latter heard an 
oral statement of the work of the preceding day, which 
statement was later dictated for the records. Easily 
such oral statements degenerated to mere chatty de- 
scriptions. A visitor of poor judgment could so colour 
her statement that it seemed natural to do to- 
day the very things she refused to do last week under 
exactly similar conditions. Now the supervisor talks 
to the visitor of things the latter's record has not made 
clear ; asks what is planned for to-day's cases ; and 
helps where she formerly listened. The visitor has 
learned to dictate properly. She has been given the 
chance to show others and herself the kind of mistake 
she is apt to make. It is understood that the visitor 
is not to ask advice except when she cannot stand alone. 
Nothing is to go to the superintendent that any one 
else can answer. No one earning $75 a month is to 
do work worth only $40 a month. No one is to be 
judged by what he means to do, but by what he does. 
A mistake is never a discredit unless it occurs a second 
time. Records are used to disclose omissions and weak- 
nesses, to point the way to workers or to work needing 
attention. Whether a person is asking unnecessary 
questions is decided by his supervising officer, just as 
the Association relieves the applicant of all responsi- 
bility for indiscriminate relief. 



168 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

Daily reports are summarised on weekly blanks and 
on monthly reports showing how one visitor's work 
compares with that of the others. Monthly reports 
set totals for this month and for the fiscal year to 
date, side by side with totals for corresponding period 
of last year and separate columns for decrease or in- 
crease. Supervisors, superintendent and board look 
at the changes, not at the total. Why this excess in 
shoes? 2,500 additional school cases. Why so few 
tenement complaints ? Visitors have grown inattentive. 
Why the marked increase in Miss L.'s visits? She 
counted a visit to purchase groceries for five families 
as five visits instead of one. The record alone an- 
swers no questions ; it prompts the responsible officers 
to ask questions that can be satisfactorily answered 
only by investigation. In one instance a visitor's pro- 
test against additional work was traced in an hour by 
means of records to discoveries that ended in the re- 
quest for her resignation. What we learned from this 
catastrophe we now get by a comparative table. Is 
not much time wasted by visitor and stenographer in 
the entry — "As family is doing well, case is referred 
to superintendent of relief for closing?" — New entry 
adopted,— R. F. C. 

The Association had never classified results or condi- 
tions leading to treatment. While it had known, the 
proportion of each year's families that came to it for 
the first time, it had never asked how many of those 
previously aided had been coming regularly for two, 



Origin of Statistical Card 169 

three or more years. It had tabulated in a general way 
the immediate cause, whether lack of work, sickness, 
shiftlessness, intemperance, desertion, old age, mental 
and physical defects. Little or no use, however, had 
been made of this information. Once or twice indig- 
nant protests against aid to strikers had caused an in- 
quiry as to the number who were idle because of strikes 
or intemperance; beyond the mere fact that only 18 
out of 2,700 families at a particular time were in this 
class, no lesson was learned from the inquiry. In 
1906 the card on page 171 was adopted, differing 
somewhat from the card devised by the C. O. S. Ma- 
terial relief is recorded on the back by months. 

The use of figures as keys to occupation, nationality, 
whether strikers, inexcusably idle, etc., is an economy 
device familiar in business as well as statistical work. 
Like the numerical file, it is just as easy to remember 
that 32 means German as if it were written out and 
it is much quicker to record. 

In the financial office a number of changes have been 
made. The work grew so that it was necessary either 
to simplify bookkeeping or multiply bookkeepers. 
Desire to know whether or not the expenses were within 
the budget, how this year compared with last year, 
how donations for general work compared with dona- 
tions for fresh-air work, and how the expenses of both 
compared with receipts, — kept the bookkeeper busy 
answering questions. He learned from experience that 
certain questions would probably be asked, and for his 



170 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

own convenience started certain subsidiary ledgers and 
note books in which he put down the desired facts as 
they occurred. Even then, however, he was unable to 
keep up, and to save the double writing, a classified 
cash book and voucher register were substituted, so 
that, now, instead of having one column for food and 
clothes and shoes and medicine, each item has its own 
column, permitting instant summary of business for a 
day, a week, a month or a year. Instead of requiring 
three signatures for each of twenty vouchers showing 
payments by one visitor, the visitor now certifies to each 
individual account, the twenty vouchers are put in 
one envelope and approved by the supervising officer. 
Gradually the separate column entry saved so much 
time that the same principle has been extended to the 
books of the separate departments, on the principle of 
the daily report shown opposite page 160. 

How improved methods release energy for more ef- 
ficient service is illustrated in the changes made in the 
system of appealing for funds and of recording dona- 
tions. A former contributor wrote with his renewed 
contribution the following : — "I have received four let- 
ters and four envelopes and four cards. That seems 
like a waste of good money." Because of desire to 
know that had led to careful separation of each item 
entering into expense of appeals, it was possible at 
once to win the contributor's approval by the follow- 
ing letter : 

"Regarding the four letters, four envelopes and four 



Statistical Card For Relief Work 171 





i 


1 


<-> 
I 

Q. 


o 


O 

1 
a. 


S 


Others In 

Household 




Unmarried 

Children away 

from home 






Children at homo 




i 

3 


3 


M 


1 
5" 














3 


















? 










! 












1 

1 

g 

a. 

a. 

i 






























f 


3 Ml 
































f 

•o 

3 


«n 




r 

5 
I 
§ 


I 4 * 














S 

fin, 
































2.o 2, 


19 

O 
































2*3 

* a *> 
















s 
































1 


> 

CD 
2 
O 
3J 

s 

> 
r 
o 
o 
z 
o 

H 
O 

z 
</> 


v» 














































s 






I 


3j -n"*" 












































f 


































F 


a 














































c 


" 




© 

i 

s 


1? o ^ 
3 2. 
































? 


-< 

m 
> 

i 














1 


















? 


j." a 
s 

3 
S3 


t 


3 

a. 


o 




o 

CO 


o 




I 

t 
n 


m 
3 


i 


O 

c 

>o 
-m 
oo 

D 

m 


CO 

a. 




r 


j? 


o 
p 


a 


X 


e> 


5 
2." 

5 


H < 
J g 

r 


p 
< 

o 


|= 3 
■< - 


H 
33 

> 






i 

§ 

r 




o 




X. 

CO 

X 


1 

3. 

p 


o 




-1 


CO 
R 

I 


o 
1 

3 


3 


2 | 

3 a 
1 


1 

5 


5 s I 
I > 

IS 

a 



I 


2 
rn 

z 






7 


I 
















4 

X 





172 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

cards mailed to you, may we hope that your underlin- 
ing 'seems' will make welcome this explanation? If 
you received more than one appeal at one time it was 
a clerical error and certainly wasteful. If, however, 
you refer to four appeals of four different dates, our 
explanation is as follows — In this particular instance 
the four letters, four envelopes and four cards cost, 
including postage and service, about eleven cents. 
You have sent your cheque for $10. If , as we trust, 
our account of this year's work demonstrates that you 
have made a good investment, and if you continue 
your support, our four reminders would seem not to 
have been a waste of good money. Since this appeal 
went out we have received over $10,000, which would 
not have come had it not been for an expenditure of 
less than $200 in stating the emergency of our situa- 
tion. 

"You see, knowing the work intimately, our officers are 
convinced that the reason we do not receive a response 
is that the appeal does not reach the hoped-for con- 
tributor, or perhaps that business matters have driven 
the subject for the time out of mind. This whole ques- 
tion of charitable appealing has been given too little 
serious study. We are never quite sure as to the wis- 
dom of a policy until after it has been tested. We 
always welcome suggestions and criticisms, as these 
make progress easier." 

Four times a year $800 was spent on appealing to 
18,000 non-contributors. Not until 1904 was it 
learned that both the November appeal and the May 
appeal brought less than they cost, every one having 
been satisfied with the unclassified totals showing that 
the return from all four appeals was about $8,000. 



Study of Appealing Methods 173 

The character of the November and May appeals was 
immediately changed, non-contributors receiving a 
different kind of appeal from that sent those whose in- 
terest had already been awakened. Later these ap- 
peals were omitted and second emergency appeals sent 
out in mid-winter and mid-summer with better results. 
An effort having once been begun to compare criti- 
cally receipt from appeal with cost of appeal, tests 
were made with different kinds of type, with different 
methods of approach, so that by 1905 the board was 
ready to experiment with paid advertising. The 
prejudice against paying for the privilege of an- 
nouncing social needs was met with the statement that 
$3,200 was being spent each year to appeal to 18,000 
non-contributors. The charitable work of the com- 
munity was being mainly supported by 20,000 givers, 
one-third of whom carried the greater part of the bur- 
den. Using the press to make known opportunities 
for helping the needy was regarded as no less legiti- 
mate in itself than using the press to make known to 
the needed how to help themselves. Personal ap- 
peals, collections, fairs, eulogistic notices in the news- 
papers — either singly or combined — these meth- 
ods were not reaching a sufficient number of possible 
givers to test fairly the public's interest in charitable 
work. It was too much to expect editors, however 
generous, to print appeals for the same cause in three 
or five successive issues, except where the appeals 
chanced to have a journalistic value. In other words, 



174 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

except in the case of the few charities that happened 
to enjoy special privileges or to be engaged in news- 
making work, completely effective use of the press was 
impossible unless space was bought. English charities 
were using this method; that it paid them was infer- 
able from the fact that 52 charitable advertisements 
appeared in one issue of the London Times. Whether 
paid appeals would prove a good investment was a 
matter of experiment in America. 

In the summer of 1905 advertised appeals costing 
$676 brought directly $2,400 from 245 individual 
contributors besides numerous friends who aided 
through fairs and entertainments. Of this num- 
ber 117 gave $658 in 1906. There was, therefore, a 
net return on the first summer's advertising of $2,382 ; 
probably several contributors will continue to give for 
many years. Indirectly these notices undoubtedly 
contributed to an untraced increase of $11,300 in 
fresh air receipts. The following winter $700 ex- 
pended in advertising relief needs led to numerous 
gifts of $1 to $100 and to at least one new friend 
whose will provides for a gift of $20,000. During the 

In Memoriam 

Inquiries are invited as to suitable objects 
for Memorial Gifts or Funds. 

The Association's 63 years' experience in 
learning and meeting human needs, in thous- 
ands of instances every year, is wholly at 
your service. R. S. Minturn, Treasurer, Room 
210, No. 105 East 22 Street. 

N. Y. Association for Improving the 
1843 Condition of the Poop 1906 



Advertising Charitable Needs 175 

summer and autumn of 1906 advertising was con- 
tinued and brought directly a return of $5 for every 
dollar of cost. Indirectly these paid notices helped to 
complete a fund of $250,000 for the Seaside Hospital, 
and increased by $15,000 the receipts for general 
fresh air work. A careful count is kept of donations 
returned with the key number given to each magazine 
and newspaper. Entirely apart from the financial ad- 
vantage of this policy, is the great moral advantage 
of informing the entire community of the needs of that 
community and of the opportunities to help. Those 
in distress know, as they should know, where relief can 
be found ; those appealed to by the unfortunate know, 
as they should know, where help will be gladly and 
promptly given; those having a desire to aid know, 
as they should know, where their investment may be 
made to pay high dividends, 

The partnership of contributors is recognised by a 
personal word telling them about the disposition of 
their gifts or explaining the status of work on the day 
the receipt is made. This practice was begun in an- 
swer to lapsed contributors, or those giving small sums 
with expressions of regret that their gifts could not be 
in proportion to their interest. To write personal notes 
acknowledging interest took time. That it paid, was 
indicated by notes of thanks, — "I have been contribut- 
ing to various charities for twenty years, and this is 
the first time that I ever received more than a formal 
printed receipt." "When I had the letter telling about 



176 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

the first child in a bed I named at Sea Breeze, I felt 
as though I wanted to name five beds." "That is the 
kind of letter I like to receive. I enclose my cheque 
for $1,000." What is more important, the attitude 
of the financial staff of the Association has changed 
toward beneficiary and toward contributor. The giver 
is represented, not exploited. It is assumed that he 
must be in sympathy with the work, and it is an acci- 
dent of his own obligations or a defect in our educa- 
tional work if he decreases or discontinues his money 
contributions. We could, therefore, in all sincerity 
write to a contributor who regretted that $75 intended 
for Sea Breeze (the Association's summer home for poor 
children and mothers) had gone to a sick foreman, — 
"We regard that as a gift to the Association, — just 
as we regard a vote for more efficient schools, for 
cleaner streets, for a pure milk supply, as support of 
the Association's work. Sea Breeze is an attitude of 
mind, not a place." Lest these personal notes shall 
indicate waste of time and stationery, and also to pre- 
vent their becoming perfunctory, brief statements 
fitted to the day's problem or the contributor's interest 
are typewritten on the back of the receipt, for 
example : — 



Mrs. Blank will be pleased that by to-night our relief 
visitors will have played Santa Claus, with gifts no 
less cheerful because substantial, for some 8,000 chil- 
dren and parents. Our annual report shows that we 



Studying Results of Appeals 177 

do our best to keep as much as possible of the Christ- 
mas spirit in winter and summer relief work. . . . 

May we write you later in the week just how we have 
played Santa Claus with your gift? To-night we are 
mailing you a copy of our last report which, on page 
3£, tells of last Christmas and of the spirit it is easier 
to keep throughout the year because of this week's 
greetings. 

Old contributors and new contributors have their dif- 
ferent attitudes toward the agency helped. It became 
necessary to know whether the donation was the first 
or tenth ; how long the giver's name had been on the 
mailing list. It was also a help to know whether the 
gift was increased or decreased. Is the decrease due 
to the fact that an appeal is sent in November to a 
giver who answered first a midwinter appeal? Should 
appeals be sent in the month when gifts are sent ? Do 
contributors dislike to be appealed to more than once 
during twelve months? Hence the contribution card 
disclosing at a glance to the addressing clerk the 
month when appeals should be addressed, the regular- 
ity of gifts, their amount for various funds. This 
card also points out promptly which contributors have 
failed to renew their gifts during the current year. 
To insure proper record of each contribution it was 
thought necessary to have it written several times: 
(1) in a donation book ; (2) in a cash book (3) alpha- 
betically upon a register of gifts; (4) on a receipt; 
(5) on a receipt stub; (6) the name and address on 



178 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

the envelope. Will you compute the time required to 
write six times each of 5,000 entries giving your full 
name, house number, street, city, state and amount of 
your gift? 

If to this is added the time required to look up 
in local registers gifts from summer or winter hotels 
to make sure that donors are non-residents, it is 
obvious that prosperity has its difficulties. In 
mid-summer, 1906, the worker in charge of this de- 
partment replied to a remonstrance because the Asso- 
ciation office was two or three days behind in sending 



PART OF LAST YEARS WORK 
Belief Dept., Families - 3,927 

" " Other Persons *2,687 

Fresh Air Outings - - 23,051 
Baths provided - - 355,266 
Visits made ... 84,039 



SOME SPECIAL ACTIVITIES 

Campaign for Pure Milk 

For Increased Hospital Support 

For Physical Welfare of School 

Children 
Sea Breeze Hospital for Tuber- 
culous Children 
$250,000 Raised for Permanent 

Sea Side Hospital 
Open Air Camp for Sick Babies 
foot of Fast 65th Street 



ANNUAL NEEDS 



For all purposes 
Iiife Members 
Annual Members 



$150,000 
- - $250 
$10 and up 

*2,602 homeless men and women 
aided through Joint Application 
Bureau. 



no 1431 



Zbc Hew Boi 

acknowledges a d* 
with thanks. 



To 



Energy Saved by System 179 

receipts, — "The old system is twenty-five years behind 
the times anyway." This led at once to a thorough 
overhauling that saves five-sixths the labour. Now one 
single writing of the name, address and amount on the 
receipt serves every purpose. The original receipt 
goes to the contributor in a window envelope ; the car- 
bon second is filed serially and chronologically ; the 
contribution card shows the receipt number; the cash 
book must agree with the receipts filed away for the 
day, as the receipts must agree with the count of the 
clerk who opens the mail; the subscribers' cards on 
which the receipts are entered must agree with mail- 
ing clerk, the cashier, and the total for the receipts. 
The time formerly spent in writing each name, ad- 
dress and amount five times, is now available for educa- 
tional work, for obtaining new names for mailing list, 
for studying the effect of various appeals upon pos- 
sible givers, and for watching carefully the sums not 
paid as usual to date, or for sending a personal word 
to those whose letters suggest that such word will 
be more welcome than a formal receipt. 

The annual report is illustrated. Effort is made to 
interest contributors in the work they make possible. 
Opportunities for benevolence are described. Black 
type is used in first lines of paragraphs or between 
paragraphs, to facilitate hurried reading. The sum- 
mary tables give at a glance the essential lessons of the 
year. Policies about which there is difference of opin- 
ion are squarely faced and the Association's positior 



180 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

is stated. That it costs money to give money away 
wisely is admitted. 

// your gifts are to reach those in most urgent need, families 
should be invited in order of need, not in order of application. 
The earliest plea is often for the least needy; one family whose 
friends made an urgent plea had an annual income of over 
$3,000. Actual need can be learned as a rule only by visiting 
the home. 

Of 62,464 individuals visited at home, 23,051 were given out- 
ings. Of the remainder many needed other things than out- 
ings. Hundreds were able to pay for outings for themselves. 
The entire cost of visiting 62,464 individuals, of inviting the sick 
and broken down, of correspondence, appeals, general manage- 
ment was $11,416.28, or $.18 per person referred to us. Of 
this amount $7,184.97 is chargeable to insurance — to those who 
did not go to Sea Breeze — and is not included in the cost of 
entertainment of those who did go. 

As to legacies, it is assumed that a bequest is intended 
to perpetuate a giver's interest in the work. Every 
legacy is therefore placed immediately in the Reserve 
Fund. But it is also assumed "that the deceased bene- 
factors of the Association would not have wished their 
gifts to remain intact at the expense of refusing relief 
to those in urgent need." Criticism and suggestion 
are invited, mistakes frankly admitted, or explained 
and justified when possible. Many important changes 
have been due to advice and hints from interested con- 
tributors. For example the contributions are footed 
and carried forward page for page instead of the cus- 
tomary final footing that no one can easily prove. 

Several features of the financial statements were not 



Contributors May Test Efficiency 181 

understood. For example, the reported cash balance 
of $59,715 at the close of the sixty-third year seemed 
inconsistent with the president's explanation of a de- 
ficit of $17,100 ; the report failed to show that the bal- 
ance consisted of restricted funds not available for cur- 
rent uses, plus a working fund borrowed from the 
Association's Reserve. The fresh air balance of 
$34,000 seemed inconsistent with the urgent appeals 
during the last weeks of the summer season ; the report 
failed to show that this latter balance consisted of 
$20,000 given towards a hospital building, of $4,000 
necessary to begin the next fresh air season, and of 
$8,000 specially given for the following winter's work 
for crippled, tuberculous children. It appeared from 
the report that it had cost $23,000 to place material 
relief worth $41,000 in tenement homes; there was 
no disclosure of the important facts that, of $53,739 
given last year and available for relief in homes, every 
dollar had gone directly into homes ($41,000 in food, 
fuel, medicine, etc., and the remainder in services of 
nurse, visiting cleaners, visiting teachers of cooking 
and sewing and visitors), and that the entire expense 
of administration had been borne by interest on in- 
vested funds. Succeeding reports may be expected to 
make clear not merely for expert accountants but for 
the least experienced contributor, exactly for what 
purpose funds are spent and how used. 

Efficiency in charitable work requires constant tests 
of worker, of director, and of work itself. Occasion- 



182 Efficiency in Charitable Work 

ally a society's report overstates the value and the 
volume of work done. It is, however, generally true 
that the best indication of a society's breadth of pur 1 
pose, consistency and efficiency is its annual summary 
of work done, of work planned and of money needed. 
Time does not permit givers to examine at first hand 
the various charitable agencies of their community, 
any more than it permits a personal investigation of 
individual applicants for relief. There is, however, 
time enough for every contributor to apply efficiency 
tests to any society's appeals, to its annual statements, 
or to its answers to specific questions. When those 
responsible for the direction of charitable work substi- 
tute result for motive, efficiency for goodness, as a 
test of their own efficiency, — then and only then will 
charitable work have more general and more generous 
support. 



IX 

Efficiency in Preventing Crime 

Of no great public duty have we asked so few ques- 
tions, counted, compared and summarised so little as 
with regard to our treatment of the criminal. At 
enormous expense we have built courthouses, gaols and 
prisons to fit a criminal code whose traditional pur- 
pose is to grade punishment according to microscopi- 
cally graded offences. It is true the statistical method 
has been tried, but for the most part only by so-called 
criminal anthropologists or criminologists to see 
whether and how far the criminal's body, brain and 
motive depart from the normal. We have sought to 
learn why men drink alcohol to excess, and to what de- 
gree their grandfather's shiftlessness, drunkenness or 
intermarriage is responsible. We have tried to explain 
by heredity and physical measurements why some 
negroes rob hen roosts and watermelon patches, why 
some small boys steal rides on railroads, why some 
ladies' maids pilfer jewelry and laces, and what suc- 
cession of events led the superintendent of a Sunday- 
school to loot a bank. Offenders are photographed, 
measurements and impressions taken of their fingers 
and thumbs. What we have not analysed and photo- 
graphed in this way is ourselves, our attitude toward 



184 Efficiency in Preventing Crime 

the offender and his crime, the mechanism that we have 
applied to treating that offender and the results upon 
his later life and upon society of the penalty we have 
imposed. We have expressed little interest in the char- 
acter or the acts of a magistrate who flips a coin to de- 
cide whether a man should be turned loose upon society 
or imprisoned. Because we have set out to count and 
estimate forces beyond our vision and are neglecting 
those at hand, we have very little information of value 
with regard to crime or criminals. 

Of late there has been a tendency to challenge the 
beliefs of our forefathers as to gaols and gaolers, 
judges and juries and their remedy for crime. We 
talk less of vengeance, vindication of the law, deter- 
rent effect of short hair, stripes and lockstep. In pub- 
lic, at least, penologists urge the humanity and the 
economy of reforming offenders, of preventing crime, 
turning on more light, training and educating crimi- 
nals to correct distorted ideas. We now defend the 
indeterminate sentence that fits the man's need, not his 
crime. Everything is done to prepare the prisoner 
for his return to industry instead of emphasising his 
isolation. To test the keeper's judgment that a man 
may be trusted he is paroled until relapse is unlikely. 
But all our talk has not as yet effected one per cent, 
of the changes in criminal jurisprudence that our 
newer and humaner professions demand. 

The old penology would not have been allowed for 
centuries to mete out injustice and injury to offender 



The Market Rate of Crime 185 

and to society, had efficiency tests compared what it 
said with what it did. Instinct penology among primi- 
tive men punished with the death penalty nearly every 
act that injured the tribe or its leaders; facts tardily 
convinced rulers that society could not afford to lose 
a fighter every time a rule was broken. Complainants 
learned tardily, too, that they were given remorse, not 
revenge, when former friends or relatives were tor- 
tured to death for offences since forgiven. "Eye for 
eye and tooth for tooth" was tried, but was, if pos- 
sible, less satisfactory to both society and prisoner 
than the death penalty. Had restriction on liberty, 
the dungeon and scourges been tested, it would have 
been seen earlier that the influential and the rich had 
distinct advantages then as now. They were able to 
purchase immunity from both discomfort and disgrace. 
Even insignificant persons were permitted to write 
such things as "Pilgrim's Progress" and "Paradise 
Lost." A superficial test would have shown that gaols 
full to overflowing do not pay creditors or inculcate 
reverence for law. For over a century the gaol meth- 
od has been successful only in the respect mentioned by 
a boy sheriff of a boy republic, exulting over a new 
gaol, — "Success? Why last Thursday every fellow 
in the Republic was in that gaol but me and the 
gaoler!" Despite repeated failures legislatures have 
gone on fitting to the crime the days in gaol or the 
money fine that would vindicate the law and punish 
the prisoner. Criminal equity has shaded penalties 



186 Efficiency in Preventing Crime 

according to fluctuations in the "market rate" of crime 
with the grotesque precision ridiculed recently by an 
observer indignant at a sentence of 20 years and 
17 days, — "I could account for the 20 years all right, 
if the judge would explain how he got the 17 days." 

The revulsion against the retributive justice of our 
fathers we owe in large part to men and women who 
visited gaols in the interest of the physical and spirit- 
ual welfare of prisoners. Having no doubts whatever 
as to the justice of the gaol sentence, they resented 
the condition of the gaol. The world over, the first 
protest has been against buildings filled with vermin 
and with disease germs. Charges of demoralising 
idleness, immorality, injustice, have followed owing to 
repeated pictures similar to the following : 

A small boy of nine is in an ill- ventilated, dark room in 
a county gaol. For what? He is accused of having 
stolen a pair of shoes worth $1.25. He has already 
waited for trial fifty-three days, at a cost to the county 
in board alone of $13.25. He must still wait thirty days, 
although his gaolers are convinced of his innocence. 

In a nearby county gaol is a young woman 
decollette. For ten weeks she has been attended only 
by male gaolers, at an expense to the county of fifty 
cents a day for board alone. She herself is charged 
with no offence, but is waiting until her state finds 
three men who drugged and assaulted her while she 
was returning from a party. The state does not pre- 
tend to be looking for the men. 



The Gaol a School for Crime 187 

Near the City of Brotherly Love a little girl <?f seven 
spends her days in a compartment with idle women 
prisoners of every description, pickpockets, street 
walkers and in the next corridor a murderess. The 
little girl enjoys the dignity of being a menace to the 
United States, and is held to answer the charge of 
having offered a counterfeit bill in exchange for 
bread. 

A girl of sixteen is sentenced to two years in prison 
for having stolen fifty cents ; a woman of forty is 
given two years for having "converted," to quote the 
district attorney, "brunettes into peroxide blondes 
and confined them in a brothel." 

A girl of seventeen, of somewhat more refined fea- 
tures than the other women about her, confesses that 
she is serving her second sentence. She is willing to 
do anything but go to a reformatory or take any step 
that suggests a desire on her part to regain her foot- 
ing. Further inquiry established the fact that until 
her first sentence she had been a good girl. Her 
mother in a fit of temper made a complaint of disor- 
derly conduct, that is, pounding on the door and 
screaming. During her first ninety days in gaol asso- 
ciations and habits were cultivated that required her 
return soon after discharge and made of her a con- 
firmed criminal. 

In almost any county gaol a group of men may be 
found in durance vile and idle, playing cards and swap- 
ping yarns. How a few of them get to gaol is illus- 



188 Efficiency in Preventing Crime 

trated by two pleas that I heard in one court the same 
morning, — "Guilty, your Honour, but I wasn't 
there," and "Guilty, your Honour, but I didn't do it." 
Upon inquiry, the court learned what should not have 
surprised him, that the defendants were advised by 
their lawyers to plead guilty as a means of hastening 
a dismissal or of insuring a light sentence, — the prose- 
cuting attorney's method of making a good record for 
successful prosecution and for clemency. Another 
prisoner, charged with burglary, declared that he was 
hounded by the police and called a gaol bird until no 
avenue of honest employment was open to him. If 
these men are in gaol for the sake of protecting soci- 
ety or to better the men, neither effect is accomplished 
by permitting them to associate in idleness with con- 
firmed offenders, learning to despise the name of jus- 
tice, and to disdain, if not to hate, society. If they 
are imprisoned merely because they cannot pay fines or 
costs, then it is poor business to keep them idle, when 
they might be working and paying their fine. 

After their protests against filth, overcrowding and 
idleness, visitors who went to gaol to save souls of equal 
value noticed that equal crimes were treated with un- 
equal penalties. Seeing the same men in gaol over and 
over again led them to doubt the deterrent effect of 
gaol sentence. As they saw that prisoners were ene- 
mies of society, they boldly asserted that society could 
not be protected by any penalty that made men un- 
repentant, resentful and lacking in self-respect. 



Origin of the New Penology 189 

Finally these visits taught the essential similarity of 
the men in gaol and their fellows outside, judges not 
uncommonly making snapshot opinions as to two per- 
petrators of the same crime, sentencing one to ninety 
days in gaol and letting the other go scot-free without 
either fine or parole. Newspapers call attention to 
such incongruities, and the general public comes to 
welcome cartoons such as one quoting two wealthy 
fugitives from justice, — 

"Say, Mac, I notice by this morning's paper that a 
poor man with a large family has been arrested in New 
York for stealing four cents' worth of sugar from the 
Sugar Trust." 

"Dear me ! How distressing it is to contemplate the 
utter depravity of the lower classes." 

A rich man's paper begins to suggest that there are 
more criminals outside than inside penal institutions: 
"For the petty, resourceless rogues who fall by the 
wayside society has no mercy and little thought ; but 
for the greater criminals society's code is: as long as 
grand juries do not indict you and judges do not send 
you to the penitentiary we will dine with you and ask 
you to dine with us, and you and yours shall have un- 
impaired intercourse with us and ours." 

From such challenge and protest grew the new penol- 
ogy. However difficult it may be to trace an offender 
back four or five generations, or to weigh the physical 
and moral elements within him that cause him to be 
caught in a criminal act, there is no difficulty what- 



190 Efficiency in Preventing Crime 

ever in counting instances such as the above. The 
sanitary conditions of a gaol can be described as ac- 
curately as a railroad accident. We can learn abso- 
lutely whether it is practicable for a prisoner to 
breathe clean air and to have a clean body, and whether 
our treatment is calculated to make a brute or a man 
of him. We can tell whether he is idle and how much 
it costs to keep him in idleness, how much industrial 
energy is withdrawn from society by making a burden 
of one who ought to be working to support himself 
and his family. It is easy to count the number of 
times a prisoner has been in the same gaol ; it is practi- 
cal to tell whether a judge or governor or president 
is using any other standard than political expediency 
in dispensing his so-called clemency, and what his whim 
or favouritism may cost the public. But in spite of 
the ease with which this definite knowledge may be 
maintained, it is generally true that no one, not even 
judge, jury, prosecuting attorney, or trustee of penal 
institutions, has cared to know the significant facts 
about these institutions. In other words, those respon- 
sible for the prevention of crime are not in the habit 
of applying efficiency tests to themselves and their 
methods. 

Wherever questions have been asked persistently as 
to efficiency of gaol, gaoler, judge or jury, the public 
has demanded action in accordance with the facts. 
Crime interests the average man more than goodness, 
partly because it occurs less frequently and partly 



Crimes of Justice 191 

because of that vindictiveness — holier than thou opiate 
— which the great publicist Dooley has summarised 
thus, — "We'll never git rid of hangin' so long's the 
people likes it so much." Whatever we want for the 
criminal we want hard. Interest could easily be sus- 
tained with proper effort, for newspapers make asso- 
ciation with crime part of our minimum standard of 
living. How questions lead speedily to action, if they 
happen to be the right questions, is shown by the re- 
cent successful fight in New Jersey for the abolition of 
sheriffs' profits on prison fare in county gaols. In- 
stinct revolted against a system that could encourage 
flagrant injustice. Comfort of mothers required pro- 
test. Commerce and cupidity stirred taxpayers, and 
those politicians who were not sheriffs, to echo the 
governor's slogan against sheriffs' salaries of $7,000 
to $30,000— "The labourer is worthy of his hire, but 
one labourer is not worth the hire of two or three." 
Stories of injustice and demoralisation in the name of 
justice caused speculation in prison food to become a 
public nuisance. Anti-slum, pro-slum and religious 
motives demanded that the state stop subsidising crime 
by making it to the interest of sheriffs to keep pris- 
oners in gaol as long as possible, to deprive them of 
decent surroundings and to oppose prison reforms. 

Facts showed that in counties where the sheriff was 
permitted to speculate on prison fare the gaol was 
dirty, undisciplined and a disgrace to a Christian com- 
munity. In counties where fees were abolished there 



192 Efficiency in Preventing Crime 

was an interest in the prisoner's welfare, not in his 
meals, and so far as selfish motives operated, they 
tended to shorten the prisoner's term. The state was 
interested by the reiterated appeal of the New Jersey 
Review of Charities and Correction to all sides of each 
man, and in 1906 substituted salaries for fees. 

The old penology is challenged not only because of 
its general mis-application but because its reasoning 
is proved to be false. The new penology seems now 
to be based upon a sound interpretation of experience 
with retributive and deterrent punishment. Never 
was reasoning more humane or more efficient than that 
of the thought-chain ending in Probation and Juve- 
nile Court. If society can conduct its business with so 
many not yet detected prisoners at large; if it can 
re-absorb offenders capriciously probated without 
supervision by judicial clemency; if men already in 
prison may be safely pardoned or paroled, then surely 
it is safe to re-absorb without sending to gaol many 
convicted offenders, especially juveniles and first or 
minor adult offenders. It is better for a man to sup- 
port his family by work outside of gaol than to make 
a public burden of them and himself while he attends 
a school of vice. If cash fines may safely be accepted 
in lieu of imprisonment, fines on the instalment plan 
should have even greater moral and economic value. 

But gaols are not reformed by simply abolishing fees 
or establishing juvenile courts. Not correct ideas but 
efficient men make reformatories practise what they 



Efficient Probation 193 

preach. Probation is discredited in many places be- 
cause no efficiency tests are applied. How can a 
drunken probation officer cure a probationer of alco- 
holism? Inefficient probation is no better, it may be 
worse than official clemency without supervision; will 
in fact often harm both criminal and society more 
than the most efficient gaols and reformatories and 
prisons. 

The goodness fallacy asks us to look no farther than 
the motives, gestures and pretensions of those who elo- 
quently extol probation, juvenile court, indeterminate 
sentence, reformatories. Efficiency asks that the new 
ideals prove their superiority by a show of results. 

How many probationers are there, -f- total number 
of offenders sentenced = ? 

Probationers re-arrested -4- total number of proba- 
tioners = ? 

Percentage of probationers re-arrested subtracted 
from percentage sentenced to gaol and re-ar- 
rested = ? 

Percentage of probationers re-arrested -r- percentage 
paroled without supervision re-arrested = ? 

Prison board saved + fines paid + wages earned = ? 

Calling things by their right names, putting every- 
thing with other things of the same kind, that is, 
classification, is most important in determining the ef- 
ficiency of probation. How will you explain the fact 
that, in spite of vast savings shown by computing 
cost of keeping probationers in gaol had they not 



194 Efficiency in Preventing Crime 

been probated, your gaol expenses have not decreased? 
Perhaps the judge is placing on probation only such 
offenders as he formerly dismissed without supervision. 
Perhaps the law is not being applied at all to meet the 
most serious conditions that gave rise to it. Is the 
judge using the probation officer for investigation be- 
fore trial? Does the probation officer sit in his office 
and let the probationer bring a card to be punched 
weekly or monthly, or does he visit the home? Is his 
work of such a character that the mother of a boy on 
probation would ask his help — as I heard one do the 
other day — for a child not yet brought to court? Or 
does he encourage mothers and friends to conspire 
with probationers, telling false stories of sickness and 
accident and employment to conceal violation of in- 
structions? Why should such questions be answered 
by guess work and why should they imply the least 
doubt as to the overwhelming superiority of the proba- 
tion idea over the gaol idea? The sounder the idea, 
the more important is it that it shall not fail or be 
misrepresented or misunderstood. 

It is difficult for laymen to comprehend and to give 
united support when doctors disagree, not only as to 
method of appointing probation officers and supervis- 
ing probationers, but also as to the results already ob- 
tained. In Philadelphia all children brought into the 
juvenile court are examined for removable physical 
defects or for chronic defects that make it extremely 
difficult for the children to act normally ; the National 



Demand for Probation Statistics 195 

Congress of Humane Societies has just declared that 
the Philadelphia practice is unconstitutional, subver- 
sive of the law and an unwarra nted interference by the 
court in private affairs. The National Mothers' Con- 
gress demands the appointment of probation officers 
by private benevolent committees and agencies ; in 
New Jersey the court appoints ; in New York the 
state commission recommends that a volunteer advi- 
sory body appoint officers. In Denver the court is 
the judge and jury and probation officer and pal. A 
platform lecturer extols the volunteer, friendly offi- 
cer that guides the wavering footstep of the offender ; 
many experts declare such volunteer service a failure. 
In New York and Chicago all juvenile court work is 
done by one judge; Philadelphia judges take their 
turn in performing this duty. To read the strictures 
on probation, one would be convinced that it was not 
suitable for children, more especially girls, nor for sec- 
ond offenders and inebriates, and that it breeds crime 
by removing fear of prison sentence. Whether and in 
how far and for what reason these strictures are true 
may be learned and must be learned if probation is to 
have a fair trial. Just because probation means a dif- 
ferent thing in every court is it essential to have ef- 
ficiency tests that so record step by step the experience 
with each probationer, as to show results to him and to 
society. 

As the Child Labour movement has temporarily 
focused attention on the age of the child rather than 



196 Efficiency in Preventing Crime 

on his physical welfare or his preparation for indus- 
try, so enthusiasm for the new penology has concen- 
trated attention on the offenders at the bar rather than 
on conditions that encourage violation of law. We 
talk for the most part about preventive measures, yet 
probation and reformatories are direct preventives for 
those persons only who have once been convicted of 
crime. In attending a dozen State and National Con- 
ferences of Charities and Correction and in reading 
several programs of the National Prison Congress I 
have never known mention of the possibility of mak- 
ing a police department the most efficient of all checks 
in preventing crime. Statistical experts have declared 
that no trustworthy data as to crime can ever be ob- 
tained until police stations, police courts and police 
officers keep adequate records of arrests, cases tried, 
convicted, withdrawn, dismissed. In a general way 
in most cities it is taken for granted that many patrol- 
men and "men higher up" abet crime, even if they do 
not incite and exploit it for their own pecuniary 
profit. That the number and efficiency of patrolmen 
affect the value of property is not sufficiently appreci- 
ated, nor that plenty of police and plenty of street 
lights would release for school and health purposes a 
large part of taxes that now go to gaols, reformatories 
and probation. Dark streets and sleepy patrolmen 
make work for many gaolers. Whether streets are 
dark enough to conceal crime or light enough to make 
its detection easy, if not certain, and whether police- 



Tests for the Public 1 97 

men are adequately paid, properly disciplined and 
efficient can be ascertained if citizens will for six 
consecutive months ask a dozen obvious questions 
and secure their answers. Whether prosecuting at- 
torneys work consistently, consecutively and efficiently 
for the interest of the public, with the intelligent co- 
operation of the public, or erupt, like Vesuvius, can 
likewise be learned. A plethora of promises and then 
a dearth of trials and convictions should teach the 
public that in dealing with crime as with other hu- 
man affairs, the question is not, "Who's in?" but 
"What's happening?" 

What the public does with the offender and not the 
number of offenders is the test of efficiency in prevent- 
ing crime. An increase in arrests is not a sure sign 
of increasing criminality : it may mean increasing 
blackmail ; it may mean the approach of election ; it 
often means increased vigilance and efficiency on the 
part of the police. An increase in the number of con- 
victions for a particular crime may show a falling off 
of offences and offenders until "traitors are no longer 
numerous enough to make treason respectable." To 
look in a prisoner's throat for defective breathing 
organs is more important than to take a thumb im- 
pression. To compare the physical condition and 
industrial efficiency of a prisoner, after he has spent 
seven years in Sing Sing, with his condition and ef- 
ficiency upon entrance, is infinitely more important 
than to know the dimensions of a birth mark. To com- 



198 Efficiency in Preventing Crime 

pare the previous condition, education and fitness with 
present efficiency and present condition, is worth more 
to society than to classify the degrees of immorality 
and ofFensiveness of those who commit crime. If we 
knew more of graft within prison walls, of exploitation 
of prison labour for private gain, of favouritism 
shown prisoners of influence, of society's failure to 
protect itself and to help criminals, it would be less 
difficult to ascertain significant facts about the causes 
of individual crime. 

If the citizen is placed on trial every time a pris- 
oner is sent to gaol, then criminology becomes a matter 
of vital consequence to every citizen, and he owes it to 
himself and to the children affected by his attitude 
toward crime, to ask the right questions about himself 
as patrolman, sergeant, commissioner, judge, gaoler, 
probation officer. 

As to Myself 

Am I secretly committing crime? 

Am I doing things which would be considered 
crimes or misdemeanors if done by residents of 
the slum? 

Am I misrepresenting my taxable property? 

Is my legal residence the same as my actual resi- 
dence, or do I reside in Newport for the sake of 
avoiding taxes where I sleep, eat, work and draw 
my profits? 

Am I taking advantage of my strength to deprive 
my waitress, my coachman, my employee, my 
salesman of the right to health, to independent 



Tests for the Individual Citizen 199 

existence, to some of the pleasures with which 
I am surfeited? 

Am I indifferent to wrongs committed by the gov- 
ernment of which I am a part and by its judi- 
ciary, its police, its gaols? 

Would I rather pension an ex-convict than give 
him work in my shop? 

Have I taken any pains to know whether justice or 
injustice is met with by those accused of crime? 

Am I infinitely more interested in suppressing fla- 
grant vice than in preventing flagrant injustice? 

Am I giving acquiescence, passive resistance or in- 
telligent, active resistance to forces that increase 
crime and prevent discharged criminals from re- 
gaining their footing ? 

If made uncomfortable by stories of crime, what am 
I doing to minimise their number and their seri- 
ousness ? 

How are my children influenced by the gaol system 
of my city, county and state? 

As to the Police 

How many patrolmen should there be to give equal 

protection to all men and all property? 
How many are there ? 
Are they properly distributed and equally worked, 

or are many given soft snaps and special details? 
Are special details, involving little work, given to 

the infirm or to those who have pull? 
Do records show clearly — 

Time, place and cause of offence charged? 

Number of charges proved? 

Number of charges unproved? 
Is the reason for a more adequate staff and for a 



200 Efficiency in Preventing Crime 

flood of light in all districts, especially so-called 
criminal districts, stated in vague terms or so 
clearly that taxpayers can see that it is cheaper 
to inhibit the impulse to crime than to punish 
criminals ? 

How many hours are arrested persons detained with- 
out meals? 

Is the condition of police stations filthy ; is ventila- 
tion or overcrowding such as to rob prisoners of 
all self-respect and to cause them to hate law? 

Are vultures allowed to prey upon the unfortunate 
by furnishing bail and other favours at usury? 

^4,9 to the Court 

Is it living in the 6th, 16th or 20th century? 

Are probation officers used before and after trial? 

Has each court an alphabetical index of offenders 

for all courts of the city ? 
Does the county judge Keep an alphabetical list 

of offenders ? 
Are offenders railroaded to jail, dismissed with 

reprimand, indiscriminately fined or placed on 

probation ? 
Does the court make snapshot judgments as to 

duration of sentence, size of fine? 
Do grand juries refer to a large number of cases 

that never ought to be tried ? 
Has the jury system outlived its usefulness? 
Is there no way of reducing the cost of convicting 

influential criminals or homicides? 
Would it be well to have one judge's pardons re- 
viewed by another? 
Should the courts have the power now possessed by 

president and governor to remit sentence or to 



Tests of Police and Gaols 201 

pardon ? Should executive officers publish a sum- 
mary of their use of the pardoning power ? 

Is the prosecuting attorney permitted to push for 
conviction and to threaten innocent men with im- 
prisonment unless they plead guilty? 

Is the court room orderly, dignified, calculated to 
increase respect for law and decency, or is it un- 
clean, dark, dingy, ugly, disordered and calcu- 
lated to make an offender vindictively resolve to 
"get back at" the law? 

Is any report made by the court giving an account 
of its stewardship, setting forth its cost to soci- 
ety and its efficiency or inefficiency? 

Is it possible in our community for police magis- 
trates to sell injustice and favouritism to thugs 
and corporations and to expose the necessitous 
to unscrupulous lawyers ? 

Is there any reason why the accounts of judges 
should not be audited the same as the accounts of 
cashiers ? 

As to Gaols, Prisons, Reformatories, etc. 

Do their records show clearly facts regarding the 
accused, his offences, time spent, cost to the 
county ? 

Are accounts businesslike; are counties charged 
for their prisoners at state institutions ? 

Is the prisoner in gaol because he could not afford 
the alternative fine? 

Could he have worked out his fine? 

Are prisoners idle ; if working, is their work educa- 
tive ? 

Is employment remunerative? 

Are children kept apart from adults? 



202 Efficiency in Preventing Crime 

Are women attended by males or females? 

Are witnesses treated like offenders? 

Is a physical examination made of prisoners? 

Are meals suitable? 

Are chaplain and volunteer missionaries learning 
what prisoners need or are they praying, as I 
once heard a saintly soul, that Heaven shall 
"teach these men their baseness and their unfit- 
ness to sit at the feet of God"? 

What is done for discharged prisoners? 

How often do magistrates, attorneys, leading phi- 
lanthropists and teachers visit? 

Is the sheriff's "rake off" on food abolished? 

Is it to the advantage of any one else to keep the 
gaol full, or to keep an individual criminal one 
hour longer than the law requires? 

Are offences classified and the results studied? 

Does a comparison of this year with five years ago 
indicate that crimes of violence are increasing 
in proportion to population, or merely that prose- 
cuting officers have been more efficient? 

Does the increase in convictions for newer forms of 
crime, such as rebating, indicate greater crim- 
inality or greater vigilance on the part of the 
public ? 

Is special provision made for the criminal insane; 
for imbeciles; for mental defectives? 

Is there state supervision of prison records and 
prison experience and state publication of com- 
parative results? 

Statistics of taxpayers in their relation to criminals 
it would be very easy to get. Statistics of criminals of 
special interest to* taxpayers we are beginning to get. 



When Justice Shall Cease to Injure 203 

Statistics of crime mean at present almost nothing. 
Unclassified totals respecting the amount of crime and 
its increase are absolutely worthless. Just as health 
conditions are misunderstood by people who think 
of deaths rather than of causes of sickness, so condi- 
tions of crime are misread by those who count crimes 
punished rather than offences committed. Few crimes 
in the calendar offend so greatly against moral and 
social law as do good people who fail to assure them- 
selves that through their system of police, juries, 
judges and penal institutions they are not adding to 
the sum total of human wretchedness. If capital pun- 
ishment fails to protect society, if as is maintained by 
many experts, it increases homicidal' motives and homi- 
cidal attempts, then those states that hang to death or 
electrocute are committing a murderous blunder. If 
in our efforts to make our streets safe we render them 
less safe, if instead of increasing goodness we increase 
vice and crime, then we are neither getting our money's 
worth nor earning an easy conscience. It is utopian to 
expect that the time will ever come when individuals 
shall cease to offend against society. It is not utopian, 
however, to look forward to a time when society shall 
cease to offend against individuals either before or 
after those individuals are convicted of crime. 



Efficiency in Religious Work 

"What would be your judgment as to the efficacy 
of your mission work if you were to find that the result 
of this winter's work is one drunkard converted and 
ninety-nine confirmed in vagrancy and hypocrisy?" 
My correspondent replied, — "I should say that one 
soul saved for eternity outweighs any number influ- 
enced for mere time." To her the suggestion of apply- 
ing the efficiency test to rescue work seemed almost a 
sacrilege. Most newspaper readers probably felt the 
same shudder and no little resentment when they read 
an item beginning : 



COSTLY C HICAGO SALVATION. 

It Averages $200 for Each Conversion 
—Only 25 Cents In Atlanta. 

As if soul values could be computed in dollars and 
cents ! Was ever anything more grotesque than mix- 
ing statistics and salvation ! But after all, to suggest 
that too much money is spent in Chicago per convert 
obtained does not imply necessarily that a human soul 
is not worth an unlimited sum. It does imply, however, 
that one soul is not worth as much as 50 souls ; that to 



Prejudice Against Statistics 205 

spend $500 on doing the work of $10 or to convert 
but one man where a different method might have con- 
verted 25, is a waste both of money and of soul oppor- 
tunity. 

Of course church workers and church givers are prej- 
udiced againt statistics ; is not the goodness fallacy 
indigenous to church soil? Of course the Church sees 
more clearly every year the vast difference between in- 
efficient and efficient helpers. And of course it calls the 
indispensable statistical method by some more agree- 
able name that suggests spirituality rather than 
mathematics. Among such names are "concordance," 
"comparative church history," "bible study lessons," 
"dictionary of biblical events," "treasurer's report," 
"year book," "church calendar," "annotated version," 
"higher criticism," "ordination." The essential in- 
gredients of each are the same as of statistical meth- 
od, — desire to know, unit of inquiry, count, compari- 
son, subtraction, less of percentage, more of classifi- 
cation and summary. 

Drill in the catechism is a very simple, inoffensive 
process of learning truths that it is desirable to know. 
The fine print in the margin of our Oxford Bibles tells 
the reader all the places where each particular idea 
appears in each Testament. A benevolent protestant 
accused of trying to win little children from their 
catholic moorings by having read to them lessons from 
the St. James version, offers prizes for the best essays 
on the origin of our Bible; thereupon students delve 



206 Efficiency in Religious Work 

anew into libraries of two continents to establish dates 
and facts, count third century votes, compare expres- 
sions of belief in the 14th century with others of the 
16th and 19th. Catechism, margin, research, — all 
use the statistical lantern. 

Ministers with defective sense of humour will in one 
sermon denounce statistics and then quote Hebrew 
and Greek authorities to establish some hairsplitting 
theory as to the kind of baptism most favoured in the 
fourth century or the derivation of faith and 
deacon. There is general interest in the number 
who enroll in the Y. M. C. A. and in the thousands who 
attend the annual gatherings of the Christian Endeav- 
our societies. Is a count of backsliders, non-attendants 
and non-contributors more statistical than a count 
of converts? Supposed reliable estimates and sum- 
maries based upon count and comparison are con- 
stantly cited by strong adherents of many faiths : the 
Confucian reveres age; the Mohammedan is temper- 
ate; Roman Catholic countries show the lowest per- 
centage of illegitimate births ; protestant lands have 
the lowest rate of illiteracy. Churchgoers who scorn 
statistics and its associates make dogmatic statements 
as to growing irreligion and will take up the time of 
old and young reading the statistics of Genesis and 
Leviticus. The difference between the statement, 
"God's message was given in only short words" and 
the statement, "500 babies die every year in the neigh- 
bourhood of our church from causes that we might pre- 



Misreading the Pa?~ables 207 

vent," is not that one is statistical and the other is not, 
but that one has to do with literature and the other 
with applied religion. One is false and the other is 
true. The concordance has brought within reach of 
the humblest reader the riches of Old and New Testa- 
ments; it is no more spiritual than a concordance of 
significant events in the church and of significant facts 
with regard to church needs that would bring within 
reach of the humblest parishioner the riches of church 
experience. 

We can never know what it has cost humanity that 
Christ's teachings have been made to bolster up such 
doctrines as that good intention or one step in the right 
direction will be accepted in lieu of effort and achieve- 
ment in proportion to opportunity. The parable of 
the lost sheep, like that of the talents, has been per- 
verted to mean that one is not strictly accountable for 
the efficient administration of his Christian effort. As 
a matter of fact, there is nothing in this or any other 
parable to warrant the belief that it would have been 
worth while for any shepherd to spend time looking 
for one lost sheep known to be at the west, if the same 
effort might have recovered ten lost sheep known to 
be in the east. The particular case in question was 
never intended to place in the balance one unit of any 
kind, whether sheep, dollar, soul or week's work, and 
teach the untruth that this one unit is worth 99 units 
of the same kind. The steward who had the use of 
one talent was condemned not for hiding his talent, 



208 Efficiency in Religious Work 

not for failing to bring back some return, not because 
he did not try, but because he did not earn with his 
opportunity at least the current rate, one hundred per 
cent. The virgins were not permitted to focus atten- 
tion on their lamps, but were rather censured for hav- 
ing no oil at the particular time when it was needed. 
The prodigal son was feted not for running away, not 
for repentance, but in spite of the older brother's good- 
ness fallacy, for the definite act of returning. Mira- 
cles were performed, not to show wonders but to meet 
need adequately, feed all of the out-door congrega- 
tion, cure palsy, raise the dead, not turn him over in 
his grave. Dives went to Hell, not in that direction 
or to a sermon about it. 

Desire to know has led to important discoveries and 
effected great revolutions in church work as elsewhere. 
The pew has been growing relatively stronger. The 
pulpit finds it necessary therefore to adapt the con- 
tent and manner of its teaching to the intelligence, the 
needs and even the whims of the pew. The unit of en- 
gagement is no longer life or ten years or three years, 
but one year or "so long as service is satisfactory" to 
both parties. The modern pastor finds it of vital im- 
portance to know whether or not he is "suiting," and 
if not, why not. He must analyse himself and his ef- 
forts, his auditors and their interests. He is learning 
the vast difference between profession and doing, 
preaching at and preaching for, and comes nearer and 
nearer to an honest admission that the best he can do 



Religious Bookkeeping 209 

is not enough for next time. One of the first — and 
best — results of this analysis was the shortening of the 
sermon from two hours to one and then to 40, 35 and 
£5 minutes. I gratefully remember one country par- 
son who, after measuring his own resources and apply- 
ing the fatigue test to his congregation, concluded 
that a fifteen-minute talk was his maximum. Another 
exhorter, by failing to stop at this maximum of effec- 
tiveness, changed Mark Twain's intention to give $100 
for foreign missions to a demand for ten cents from 
the contribution plate. So eager are church workers 
of every description to know the efficient way to spread 
the Gospel, that numerous conferences are held an- 
nually in every state and for the nation. How much a 
worker or a parish benefits from this desire to know 
depends upon the technique by which intelligence is 
sought, upon the units of inquiry, accuracy of the 
count, thoroughness of classification and the intelli- 
gence with which the answer is interpreted. 

One Sunday evening last summer I dropped in at a 
church service, where a welcome to strangers was 
advertised on the bulletin near the sidewalk. The 
Word to Strangers read : 

The purpose of the church is the development of 
spiritual manhood and womanhood. Life's day may 
mean folly and -fidelity. Life's evening may mean 
regret or rejoicing. The church wants to do Its Part 
in determining for you a happy destiny. The scope 
of its mission is as Broad as Human Life, as Deep as 
Human Need. If you are not otherwise allied, we 



210 Efficiency in Religious Work 

cordially invite you to make your church home with 
us. If you are a stranger in the city, we especially 
welcome you to all the services of this church. 

The same leaflet indicated that an assistant pastor, 
recently come from another city, was in charge of the 
church during the summer months. 

When the pastor and trustees who were away on 
their vacation returned they undoubtedly tried to find 
out whether the newly chosen assistant carried out the 
terms of their generous welcome. All the words under- 
scored suggest that somebody, either the pastor or the 
stranger, can identify the conditions of success and 
measure change and progress. Development implies 
a starting point, an ending point and a distance be- 
tween that can be definitely valued or measured. The 
implication is that spiritual manhood is capable of de- 
tection, description and measurement. So of folly and 
fidelity, regret and rejoicing, something that can be 
pictured by itself, set over against its opposite, 
weighed to see its relative influence on life and on de- 
velopment. The words scope, broad, deep, suggest 
physical limitations. Throughout the paragraph 
blind wishing is not referred to, nor pretence and un- 
successful effort. On the contrary, an objective test is 
accepted, — something that can be posted like a book 
entry for a bank or a store. The Son of Man came to 
seek and save that which is lost. It is notable that the 
Son of Man did not come to talk about saving. Suc- 
cess is measured not by talk and pretence but by per- 




REV. EDWARD JUDSON 

as pastor of the Memorial Baptist Church of Christ in New 
York constantly applies efficiency tests to religious work ; 
conducts a laboratory course for students of theological semi- 
naries where inquiries into field work of every description are 
made under strict supervision. 



Not Seeking But Finding 211 

sistence and consistency in seeking the lost and by suc- 
cess in saving. The Christian who spends a lifetime 
ostensibly seeking the lost without finding them has 
a poor claim to recognition and reward. The reference 
to human life and its needs means nothing unless this, 
that there is a measurable service which the church 
is under obligation to render. If you tell the pastor 
how many needs you have, he can show you as many 
manifestations of church interest. If a pastor cannot 
enumerate more than five human needs, the scope of 
his ministry is neither broad nor deep. Whether he can 
name more than five needs, whether the scope is broad 
and deep, whether the church is doing its part, are fit 
subjects for inquiry, count, comparison, summary, 
i. e.y for religious bookkeeping. 

What is the unit of inquiry? That depends upon 
what the church or the worker is trying to do. Any 
effort for which no unit of inquiry can be found will 
not be of serious consequence. There are so many units 
in sight to occupy the attention of church bookkeepers 
for some time to come, that they need not worry about 
others of vague outline. If one has difficulty in select- 
ing the units that should be counted first, let him make 
a list of the things that worry him, or seem to 
worry his co-workers and parishioners. If he does 
not then discover a way to test his work so as 
to show whether he is making satisfactory prog- 
ress in carrying his burden, a business doctor may be 
profitably consulted. If he is not worrying at all and 



212 Efficieiicy in Religious Work 

has no unanswered questions in his mind, that is a sure 
sign that his church needs the business doctor. So 
long as the workers' questions are few it may be safe 
to rely upon memory, a notched stick, matches or 
rough note book for his counts and comparisons. But 
just as soon as the number of human needs attended 
to or even discussed grows beyond such simple devices, 
just as soon as they vary in kind and in degree, then 
classification becomes quite as necessary as in a depart- 
ment store and the grab-bag method causes confusion, 
delay and wasted effort. Numerous ledger headings 
are necessary for church activities and for human 
needs. It becomes necessary to count and record so 
far as possible the activities of the church and to com- 
pare the results of these activities with the needs of the 
parish. 

Most churches have reports from a treasurer. They 
learn whether the money that was paid in has been 
paid out and how much remains. So far no violence 
has been done to religious spirit. Often churches ask 
what was raised from the general collections, how much 
from special services, how much from strawberry festi- 
vals and how much from pledges. This seems per- 
fectly compatible with heart interest. The ladies who 
are paying off the church debt or supporting a mis- 
sionary in China or buying a bell or running the kin- 
dergarten and dispensary will be pardoned for want- 
ing to know how little remains still to be done. Go 
where you will among church workers and you will find 



Agreeable and Disagreeable Statistics 213 

only applause for figures that prove growing bigness, 
success, progress. Such figures are not called statis- 
tics, but good news. Statistics begin when figures are 
used to show things that we happen not to be interested 
in just yet or the littleness of effort in directions where 
there is big need. 

If it is not "statistical" to set this year's attendance 
side by side with last year's attendance, it is not "sta- 
tistical" to subtract last year's total from this year's 
total and to compute the percentage of gain. If it is 
not unspiritual to discover gain, it is not unspiritual 
to disclose loss. If justifiable to find the difference and 
the percentage, it is justifiable to learn the cause of 
the difference. Why is irreligion growing (if one 
so believes), why do young people neglect church du- 
ties, and why do young men stay away from sermons ? 
In answering these questions, it is permissible to use 
units and to count just as when making up the total 
attendance. The only question is, — Do we want to 
know and to measure the cause of decreasing interest ? 

Again, if it is compatible with religious sincerity and 
fervour to count last year's contributions, what possi- 
ble objection can there be to counting the amounts 
pledged but not paid and the amounts that might rea- 
sonably have been expected from our parish? What 
are our resources ? Who has not been doing his share ? 
Whose fault is it that the possible giver is not the 
cheerful giver? The unwillingness to ask aloud such 
questions as these comes probably from the false inter- 



214 Efficiency in Religious Work 

pretation of the injunction, "Let not thy left hand 
know what thy right hand doeth." We have reason 
to believe that throughout his life Christ let his right 
hand know what his other hand was doing, for his 
acts were performed in public with distinct reference 
to influencing that public. After the left hand has 
done a good thing it must not go out and boastfully 
tell its fellow what it has done. It must have a higher 
reason than self-advertising. It should give its share 
openly. The supershare may reasonably be kept 
secret if one wishes. Christian progress has been hin- 
dered by the delicate consideration that has enabled 
so many to pose in their communities as Christian 
workers when they give neither of themselves nor of 
their means to advance their church. The rich young 
man was not told to make anonymous gifts to charity 
and religion. The church-member who does not 
openly support his church needs a special ledger head- 
ing just as much as the insurance company that gives 
secretly to campaign funds. 

The relation of the church as a whole to the commu- 
nity it serves, needs as careful bookkeeping as the rela- 
tion of the treasurer or the individual giver or spender 
to the church body. Are we as a parish doing our 
share to aid our neighbourhood? To what extent are 
we responsible for unsatisfactory conditions of streets, 
schools, gaols? Have we done our part to reduce the 
death rate ? Whose fault is it that the parishioners are 
not reminded that their duties as citizens are as broad 



The Real Church Deficit 215 

as their privileges ? Do we get as much for our effort 
by running our own relief bureau, dispensary, employ- 
ment agency, woodyard, kindergarten, as we could get 
by spending this effort through general agencies work- 
ing for the whole city? Are citizens injured when 
permitted to shift to the church their responsibility 
for objective goodness in government, schools, hospi- 
tals, milk inspection? Wherever such questions are 
asked and answered church deficit ceases to mean 
the difference in money between receipts and disburse- 
ments, but the difference in results between the moral 
influence the church might have exerted and the in- 
fluence actually exerted. 

Such tests are being applied constantly in spots. 
Only the statistical method can give the weak pastor 
and weak parish the reminders of their weakness, just 
as ritual insures seasonableness and enables the unim- 
aginative pastor to preach from the right text at the 
right time. No one familiar with the history of mis- 
sions can question the wisdom of applying efficiency 
tests to missionaries. If a medical missionary goes out, 
he is expected to know arsenic from arnica and fibula 
from tibula. We no longer send men and women 
with repelling personality to redeem anybody. We 
give them office work under supervision while they try 
to change their personality. The attempts of recent 
years to fit creed to belief are part of the general move- 
ment to secure an efficiency test. Freedom of discus- 
sion is encouraged because there is a general conviction 



216 Efficiency in Religious Work 

that a nearer approach to truth is thus made possi- 
ble. Eventually we shall apply the efficiency test 
everywhere as we now apply it to the few departments 
we have already studied. The stumbling can be mini- 
mised by adopting at once efficiency standards. 

What some parishes and pastors desire to know about 
themselves and their efficiency and how they go to 
work to answer their questions, is shown by the year 
book of one church that spends over $60,000 an- 
nually. The table of contents, alphabetically ar- 
ranged, tells on what page to look for the expenses 
of different departments — mission, kitchen garden, 
men's clubs. It also calls attention to other matters 
one is apt not to associate with parish work, — form of 
bequest, penny provident fund, sewing school. The 
financial summary gives for 27 different activities, (1) 
the balance brought forward from the previous year, 
(2) the receipts for the year, (3) total to be ac- 
counted for, (4) the total expended for each purpose 
and (5) the balance available for the use of each ac- 
tivity. In parenthesis, at the head of the summary, is 
the statement that for each activity a separate de- 
tailed account is given. Under Poor Fund, for exam- 
ple, are the following headings : 



Belief in Efficiency Tests 217 

RECEIPTS DISBURSEMENTS 

Balance at Beginning of Year. 

Communion Alms. Board and Lodgings. 

Donations, etc. Boots and Shoes. 

Sale of Garments, etc. Burials. 

Poor Box. Cash. 

Clothing. 

Drugs and Medicines. 

Groceries, Coal and Rent. 

Loans. 

Medical Attendance. 

Nurse Hire. 

Pensions. 

Transportation. 

Balance at end of year. 

The rector's report emphasises the following charac- 
teristics of the year's work: 

1. Professional standards attained. 

2. Suitable methods studied. 

3. Distinguished results achieved. 

4. Practical methods scientifically determined. 

Throughout the editorial and financial pages is the at- 
mosphere of unqualified belief in efficiency tests. 
There are indications, however, that hitherto they have 
cared more for the idea than for the proof of efficiency, 
more for lectures on scientific method than for definite 
evidence of its application. Perhaps the lack of such 
evidence in the report means merely a failure to indi- 
cate to trustees and parishioners the new knowledge 
as well as the new spirit. But there is some signifi- 
cance in the fact that the index does not tell on what 



218 Efficiency in Religious Work 

page to look for work done. For example, it is impos- 
sible to learn how many benefited from the poor fund 
whose expense table is so scientifically outlined. 
Neither in summary nor in detail are given the dis- 
tinguished results obtained in various departments. 
Nowhere is work done compared with money spent, or 
work done this year and money spent this year com- 
pared with work done and money spent in previous 
years. Although there is a tone of confidence that 
goes with growth and success, there is nothing in the 
report to show whether the parish is going backward 
or forward. A volunteer wishing to give his services 
cannot learn whether and where they are needed, un- 
less he wants to teach mission Sunday-school. If 
a friend wished to give $250,000 to meet the chief 
needs of the parish, this report would not help him, be- 
cause apparently everything was done that was at- 
tempted. 

Turning the pages of the year book raises the fol- 
lowing questions, which it would seem of advantage to 
have answered in such a document: 

How old is this church? 

Who and how many are its supporters? 

How many young men in this church did the assist- 
ant "get hold of and interest in its opportunities 
and in its work" ; how many young men in the 
church did he fail to interest? 

When the second assistant says he obtained work 
for a number of persons and admission to hos- 
pitals for several, how many does he mean? 



Questions for Church Members 219 

If 1/3 of the congregation does not contribute a 
cent for the church or its work, what systematic 
effort has been made to secure their systematic 
financial aid? 

How many visits did the trained nurse make ; how 
many families "made the influence of the nurse 
far reaching" ; how many underfed children are 
nourished ; how many found working under age ; 
how many tenement houses reported; how many 
children put under the protection of suitable 
societies ; what is the evidence of unusual activity ; 
upon how many individuals were 1,419 calls 
made; how much has the work grown? 

How many days was the nursery open ; if the aver- 
age attendance was 35 and the maximum 54, has 
the difference in aggregate attendance, 5,700, 
been explained ; if the average cost per child is $100, 
why is an annuity of $50 permitted to endow a 
bed ; how many children were sent to the country 
and how many taken on day excursions ; who are 
subscribers ; how many give to the nursery ? 

Is it true, as appears, that the 24 industrious poor 
women who earned but 50 cents a week each 
worked 21 weeks each, or does the report mean 
that during 21 weeks 24 different women worked? 
Who made up the difference between what these 
women earned and what they needed? 

Just how was $900 spent on fresh air work when 
the statement indicates that expense was borne 
by co-operating agencies? 

If no effort was made to increase the attendance 
at Sunday-school because teachers were already 
taxed to the utmost, what effort was made to 
increase the number of teachers? 



220 Efficiency in Religious Work 

Among other steps that, if taken by a church, would 
throw light both upon the problems confronting the 
church and upon its efficiency are suggested the fol- 
lowing : 

Blanks of each department should be made out by 
a central committee with reference not only to 
the work of that department, but to the work 
of the entire church. Provision should be made 
for either weekly or monthly reports, both of 
work done and of money spent, so that through- 
out the year those responsible will know exactly 
what is being done and what remains undone. 

Summaries should be comparative, January, 1907, 
compared with January, 1906, and the totals for 
the period ending January 1st, 1907, with the 
totals for the period ending January 1st, 1906. 

If comparative tables lead to misrepresentation, 
people may be taught to read tables aright if dis- 
crepancies are explained by those who make up 
the tables. The church of all agencies should not 
evade issues by failing to teach. 

Work done and money spent should be classified 
when done and when spent so as to make a sum- 
mary possible at a glance. 

Responsible officials should be shown in how far they 

have succeeded and in how far they have failed. 

Neighbourhood Needs should be studied and recorded 

Are the streets clean ? Are milk shops properly in- 
spected ? Do weights and scales defraud the poor 
of the parish? Are demoralising influences un- 
checked or unattacked? Do the institutional ac- 
tivities of the church attract the better class of 
the poor or do they antagonise and drive them 



Religion Abhors a Sterile Life 221 

away, as has recently been maintained by a prom- 
inent Boston divine? By attempting to bring 
all civic activities under the church roof does 
the church inhibit responsibility of citizens to do 
their share to insure more efficient government? 
Have sermons and services been adapted in kind 
and time to the neighbourhood's changing needs ? 

We have so misread the prophets as to forget that 
they were chosen not to feel but to do ; not to prophesy 
but to lead ; they were able to lead not so much because 
they saw the future but because they knew the present 
and the past. They rarely saw anything; they were 
shown. The Lord's method of showing the future is 
and always has been to demand that the present and 
the past be candidly analysed. Nature and religion 
and truth abhor a sterile life. Whether or not the life 
of the religious worker is an arid prairie or a dune 
without heather, may be determined by efficiency 
tests. 



XI 



Efficiency in Government 

In all the heroic talk of the past few years about 
PUBLICITY and REFORM, not one great leader of 
public opinion has seemed to realise that publicity and 
reform have their technique as well as business and 
law. Publicity has come to suggest not struggle for 
efficiency but scandal mongering; the Knights of the 
Round Table go to official and corporation corrup- 
tion in quest of the Holy Grail. Of what avail are 
panegyrics on publicity at reform conferences if the 
orator's account of his own stewardship fails to make 
it possible and necessary for the taxpayer to under- 
stand work done and work left undone, obstacles re- 
moved and obstacles remaining, cost of service rendered 
and cost of service contemplated in the office of prose- 
cuting attorney, governor, secretary of the navy or 
president ? 

There is an unmistakable tendency to define publicity 
as the right of a popular idol to find out pro bono pub- 
lico whatever he wants to know about other men's af- 
fairs, plus the further right to give that knowledge to 
the public in the idol's own time and with dropper, 
scoop or cloudburst, as the idol wills. The most bril- 
liant exponents of publicity as a remedy for corrup- 



Publicity and Government Hygiene 223 

tion have all drawn the line just a bit this side of the 
campaign contributions that last elected them. The 
certified public accountants of New York State de- 
mand an impartial outside audit of insurance books ; 
they have not demanded a system of insurance 
accounting that will not only make dishonesty of 
officials unsafe, but will make intelligence possible and 
easy on the part of policyholders. Nor have they de- 
manded that influential certified public accountants 
stop opposing every effort to secure simplified account- 
ing of the city and state business for whose efficiency 
they are responsible. Publicity as a threat we are 
offered, but not publicity as a searchlight to make the 
threat unnecessary. 

Before me are several recent addresses and interviews 
by the three self -convicted, generally admitted "good- 
est" men in American politics. Ten thousand words 
against bosses, corruption, favouritism, government 
by the few for the many. Ten thousand words for 
good citizenship, integrity and common sense. Reams 
and reams about the bones and joints, ulcers and ex- 
crescent growths of government, its potential beauty 
and its mission. Not one mention of efficiency, the 
means and tests of efficiency or any other function of 
government hygiene but good motive. 1 Not one word 

lr The President's Annual Message to Congress for 1906 con- 
tains about 21,000 words. Efficiency appears thirteen times, 
applied to six subjects: Army and Navy, 8; Panama project, 1; 
Red Cross in Japan, 1 ; Japanese Army, 1 ; the American Work- 
man, 1; Law, 1. Inefficiency is used once to characterise con- 



224 Efficiency in Government 

to show how the individual boy, the future citizen 
that inspires so much worry and eloquence, can find 
his share in government rights and responsibilities, 
not one syllable against blindness, ignorance, helpless- 
ness, sycophancy, inefficiency when under the favour- 
ite's own banner. Nothing to enable the follower to 
ask a question regarding government, but, — "Where 
is our peerless leader?" 

Naturally official reports have not shown a more in- 
timate knowledge of the ingredients of effective public- 
ity than have those who exploit the name. For example, 
our presidents have never demanded that the reports 
of their appointees show whether or not departmental 
disbursements brought returns commensurate with 
purchasing power. They have not asked that next 
year's budget be based upon a clear classified analysis 
of work done last year and of next year's probable 
needs. One or two have formed commissions to exam- 
ine accounting methods, but none has supported the 
recommendations of these commissions by executive 
order, by press interview or by appeal for public sup- 
port. The efficiency of department heads is measured 
not by countable results in their own departments, but 
rather by extra-departmental service rendered their 
party or the nation. So novel are efficiency tests that 

duct of the Spanish War; efficiently is applied twice, once to 
control of polygamy and once to carrying international 
burdens; efficient is used six times, but in each instance to 
characterise an ideal rather than work done. 



Government Statistics Discredited 225 

their application to one fraction of a department's 
business is telegraphed broadcast as news. The execu- 
tive capacity and presidential qualifications of the 
cabinet officer responsible for the innovations entitle 
him to prompt and frequent promotion from one 
cabinet post to another before the permanence of his 
reforms is assured. The Keep Commission can tell the 
President and Congress how to save enough money now 
wasted every year by the United States to exterminate 
tuberculosis and several other scourges. But every 
attempt to install thoroughgoing efficiency is side- 
tracked or blocked by influential place-holders and 
place-fillers. What ! continue the methods that in this 
one office make 200 employees unnecessary ! Elec- 
tricity shall not light government business so long as 
candlemakers need outlet for their product. 

We Americans pay enough for gathering and pub- 
lishing official reports to get facts that would not only 
interest and instruct, but would disclose the efficiency 
or inefficiency of departments and department heads. 
Unfortunately executive documents are still regarded 
as part of the victor's spoils, to be so edited as to heap 
up the beaten party's humiliation and to conceal or 
repair all weak points in the winner's armour. Not 
only are they so written as to radiate party credit, but 
the time of publication, like the time of announcing 
cabinet appointments, is itself fitted to party need. 
Whether this is accident or design is immaterial; the 
point is that department statistics are discounted and 



226 Efficiency in Government 

discredited by editorial writers who share — and foster 
— the universal belief "that the administration (of the 
opposing party) is seeking prestige by disparaging 
comparisons." 

If we have little interest and less confidence in gov- 
ernment statistics, the reason is in ourselves and the 
scarcity of questions in our minds. Have you ever 
made a list of the things you care to know about your 
state, county or city? Are you conscious of wanting 
to know more of the national government than the 
names of the president, three or four of his cabinet, 
leading senators and congressmen? Have you felt the 
slightest responsibility for the preventable misery, ig- 
norance or sickness among the poor in the nation's 
capital city? If not, then it is hardly fair to censure 
political leaders, census takers and officials for being 
equally indifferent to what lies below the surface. 

Generally speaking, government statistics have been 
required to answer but three questions, — How big 
are we ; how much bigger are we than when we counted 
last ; in what direction are we growing fastest ? About 
the only use we have made of this knowledge except 
for fireworks and buncombe, is to fix or gerrymander 
representation in Congress or local assemblies. To be 
sure questions regarding various kinds of bigness have 
been inserted in census schedules until now it requires 
scores of volumes to contain facts gathered. The value 
of the returns has not been until lately proportionate 
to amounts expended, partly because guesses were ac- 



Desire to Know Lacking 227 

cepted at their face value, and partly because the ques- 
tions asked were designed to serve purposes of history 
and declamation rather than statecraft. Many ques- 
tions were inserted that some one thought some one 
else ought to want to know about his own business ; too 
seldom did men of affairs seek information of practical 
value. Thus it came that captains of industry re- 
garded the census of manufacturers as hostile and in- 
quisitorial, whereas it was intended to help industry. 
Had the states along the Mississippi asked what yellow 
fever was needlessly costing them in lives and money, 
the National Board of Health (established 1879) 
could not have been starved to death (1885) for 
lack of funds. Not having taken desire to know to 
early temporary censuses, we were helped little by 
their returns. In proportion as we propound ques- 
tions of importance to our new permanent bureau and 
insist upon answers will its work benefit us. 

How desire to know will modify method and furnish 
units of inquiry has been shown by recent census bul- 
letins giving statistics of cities. Each volume is a 
liberal education in the statistical method applied to 
city government. The officer who wrote the schedules 
had a genuine interest in city problems. There were 
scores of things he wanted to know. He conferred 
with department heads, comptrollers, auditors, bankers, 
accountants, and asked them to send him lists of ques- 
tions they would like answered for their own or other 
cities. To insure a language intelligible to all, he then 



228 Efficiency in Government 

sent the composite list to colleagues in every part of 
the country, asking them to criticise both the form 
of the questions and the terms used. For months ex- 
perts desiring to know the same things discussed the 
units of inquiry to be used in questions and the names 
by which these things should be called, — when outlay 
should be used instead of payment or expense, and 
when income instead of receipt, etc. The result of 
the answers to the questions agreed upon is a vastly 
improved tabular comparison of American cities as to 
nearly 500 distinct administrative items. Its few de- 
fects are due to wan 1 **£ desire on the part of census 
authorities and of city taxpayers to answer certain 
important questions that will some day be asked as a 
matter of course. The reports have already justified 
many times over all expense incurred in their prepara- 
tion. For example, Bulletin 50 has led those who 
worry over the difficulty of marketing New York 
City's bonds to emphasise the fact that the comparison 
with other cities proves New York to be wasteful of its 
credit as well as of its taxes. Lest the benefits of this 
lesson be monopolised by bankers and brokers, one 
newspaper — that caters to bankers and brokers — 
warns the masses that "the power wasted comes from 
the pockets of the poor rather than the rich, for the 
latter know how to avoid their taxes." To cause the 
so-called poor to desire knowledge as to the fact and 
cause of wasted taxes and of misuse of city money for 
party or personal purposes, and to arouse some curios- 




L. G. POWERS 

Organizer, U. S. Census Inquiry into Statistics of Cities. 



The Seeker Must Turn Bookkeeper 229 

ity as to the means adopted by the rich to avoid their 
taxes, are indeed important steps toward efficient gov- 
ernment. 

Once convinced that there is a way of finding out 
whatever we want to know about our nation, our state, 
our county or our city, we shall probably be surprised 
at our interest in needs now unknown to us. To-day 
we choke questions like noxious weeds because we know 
from experience that "it is impossible to get informa- 
tion unless the seeker himself turns bookkeeper." The 
present comptroller of Greater New York was dis- 
mayed when he found himself in the same darkness as 
an outsider, and in the leading strings of his subordi- 
nates. He grew tired of sending for a bureau head, 
clerk or office boy every time he wanted to answer a 
question, and demanded an accounting of the city's 
business not too mixed up for the comptroller himself 
to understand. "Because they never have done it they 
tell me they cannot do it; because they never have 
done it they are going to begin to do it now. The 
existing method of keeping the city's accounts serves 
only to conceal the facts ; a method will be found to 
present the facts so that they will be intelligible to 
everybody who can read, if I don't do anything else 
during my term of office." 

Public accounting that serves only to conceal facts 
is a direct descendant of the goodness fallacy. Hav- 
ing satisfied our curiosity as to the goodness or bad- 
ness of public officials, we have desired to know little 



230 Efficiency in Government 

beyond the ken of an adding machine. We have asked 
one question, — Has any money been stolen? Whether 
or not we have gotten our money's worth has not yet 
concerned us, or at least we have not as yet grasped 
the truth that records may be made to tell us. With 
ostrich simplicity we have imagined ourselves protected 
against exploitation because a piece of paper called a 
voucher is filed away somewhere under a pyramid of 
other vouchers to account for every decrease in the 
city's funds. Having named this man comptroller 
and that one auditor or commissioner of accounts, we 
have closed our eyes and imagined our finances con- 
trolled and audited. An impressive illustration of our 
naivete is the recent appeal of certain good citizens 
for an itinerant auditor of a certain city department 
whose original accounts notoriously fail to give any 
idea of the economy or extravagance with which funds 
are expended. We have appointed boards of estimate 
and apportionment in the evident confidence that a 
borough president sitting in that board could and 
would guess more accurately and more altruistically as 
to the millions needed by the city than when in his 
office, surrounded by his "workers." We have seen 
nothing astonishing in the fact that the street- 
cleaning department made no report for four years ; 
that a borough president never closed his books and 
published no more enlightening account of his steward- 
ship than "repairs have been made and the usual sup- 
plies bought as necessary." City hospitals enter sup- 



Discrepancies in Official Guesses 231 

ply purchases in a dozen different books, and this with- 
out disclosing what is bought or where it is used. 
The comptroller's report conceals facts by accumulat- 
ing volumes of details, including "2,500 individual 
accounts, of which no one knows whether they repre- 
sent assets or liabilities." In a recent interview the 
comptroller announced that for eight years certain 
subordinates had "pulled the wool over the eyes of his 
two predecessors and that for one year they had 'doped 
me.' " The occasion was his discovery that "in the bu- 
reau of assessments and arrears, city employees had 
been doing work for private title insurance companies 
of the promptest and most efficient character so that 
the information of the companies is entirely accurate 
to date, while the books of the city kept to furnish this 
information to the city are in some cases eight years 
behindhand. He has reason to suppose that like be- 
trayal of official trust exists in other bureaus." 

An educational budget of $25,000,000 is voted with- 
out school or fiscal authorities knowing what expenses 
were incurred the preceding year, the number of pupils 
that benefited or the work contemplated for next year. 
There is a difference of $50,000,000 between the 
mayor's guess and the comptroller's guess as to the 
city's borrowing power not yet used. Department 
heads ask for 25% to 100% more than they need ; esti- 
mates for unpopular purposes are shrunk; water is 
put in the requests for purposes favoured by the fiscal 
board, and then later in the year the surplus in popular 



282 Efficiency in Government 

is transferred to unpopular without due knowledge or 
consideration. Although this happens year after year, 
and although reports might be made to show the fact, 
fiscal authorities go on voting without knowledge as 
to what actually became of moneys voted last year. 
Supplementary appropriations, like transfers, do not 
enter into budget making. Imaginative assistants 
guess what the departments need; the board of esti- 
mate and apportionment guesses what they can do 
without. Reports are published too late to be read, 
sans units of inquiry, sans subtraction, sans percent- 
ages or classification. No one learns anything from 
them. No one would pretend to base method or policy 
upon them. 

Thanks to the agitation of a volunteer body the 
mayor is alarmed and turns for facts, not to city 
records, but to another commission. Verily, New York 
has "one of the most highly technical (and disservice- 
able) systems of bookkeeping in the world." The con- 
dition in large cities differs from that of small cities 
in degree rather than in kind. 

Accounting systems designed solely or chiefly to pro- 
tect the taxpayer against dishonesty have failed. Out 
and out thieving is fast becoming obsolete as a method 
of gaining riches or power. Yet our cumbersome 
cheques and countercheques grew naturally. Fifty 
years ago there were many thousands of treasurers of 
private and public bodies like one Illinois county treas- 
urer whose books failed to show whether state taxes 



Honesty Tests Have Failed 233 

had been paid to the county during his term. When 
asked regarding the matter, he stated to his successor, 
— "I will have to look at my book; if it is down in 
black ink the county got it, if it is in red ink the 
county did not get it." The obvious preventive was a 
law requiring that every single payment and receipt 
be carefully entered chronologically, as for example: 

January 1st, James Smith $34.23 

March 3d, Henry Wilson 79.18 

August 11th, Jans Hanson 197.00 

Total for the year (1,000 payments) . $59,792.14 

In the New Jersey county that furnishes this illustra- 
tion, it was possible for years for the superintendent of 
one institution to overstate by from 30 to 90 at a time 
the number of inmates boarded at county expense. In 
New York City the same method does not make it im- 
possible to hire ten men to do one man's work ; to keep 
a heavy payroll for months before bath houses are 
opened and for months after floating baths are closed ; 
or by tedious, well-feed condemnation proceedings to 
pay $140,000 for a site offered the city in advance of 
the proceedings for $80,000. 

When columns of minutiae unclassified, unsummar- 
ised, were seen to give no idea whether or not the public 
officer paid twice as much for a given commodity this 
year as he paid last year, or more than he needed to 
pay, another device for securing honesty was adopted. 
Laws were passed prohibiting purchases of more than 
$1,000 at a time without public bidding. Blissfully 



234 Efficiency in Government 

content the taxpayer has failed to discover that it is 
very easy for an indulgent department head to accom- 
modate his friends by spending hundreds of thousands 
of dollars in individual purchases of less than $1,000 ; 
it does not require a Napoleon of finance to draw the 
legal line just within $1,000. The fact that all such 
transactions are mentioned in the New York's City 
Record and are filed in the comptroller's archives does 
no violence to their privacy. The sphinx itself cannot 
surpass in unintelligibility and secrecy the unclassified, 
disordered publicity of the City Record. The weakness 
of the "total recall" principle of reporting city expe- 
rience is summarised by a New York daily paper, — ■ 
"The law is blamed for a form of report which tells 
much that is of no present consequence and which 
omits almost everything that is important in forming 
an estimate of the value of New York City bonds. 
The system of the comptroller's report is a sequel of 
the Tweed Ring disclosures when it was thought that 
minute details should be reported to prevent a repeti- 
tion of graft. Investors (in city bonds) care nothing 
for such minutiae. It is not what is known that causes 
vague alarm, but what is unknown. Serious investors 
— savings banks, insurance companies, estate trustees 
— want assets, or at least resources, shown, and the 
city's reports do not show them. Let the comptroller 
give investors such a statement as many great enter- 
prises of great integrity give to their proprietors and 
there need be no anxiety about New York's credit." 



The Unknown Causes Alarm 235 

What is unknown about American government bears 
about the same relation to what is known as a list of 
personal property owners who swear off taxes to those 
willing to pay their share. The majority of taxpayers 
are convinced that they pay too much and that they 
were better off when the rate was $1.67 than when 
$1.85. Thanks to traditional miseducation of the 
public by public reports, it is possible in the year 1906 
for one of the ablest editorial writers of the New York 
press to tell the readers of a half million papers, — 
"If there were no taxes everybody would be better off." 
If we wanted to know what our taxes paid for — in 
schooling, health, comfort, in protection against in j us- 
tice, infection, fire, crime, monopoly, offensive odours 
and sights, in opportunity for recreation and cleanli- 
ness — we would frequently find out that the $1.85 year 
was full of prime bargains and that the cheaper year 
brought mainly gold bricks. If instead of worrying 
about the goodness of city officials, good mothers would 
test government efficiency, they might find hundreds of 
ways to improve their children's environment. Facts 
would leave no doubt that to give a health department 
too little money is to buy anxiety and doctor's bills 
because of infected milk or water ; that to divert money 
from police protection to police patronage is to invite 
fear and temptation and noisomeness to one's home and 
to breed conditions that children must read about, hear 
about, see and respond to ; to skimp on schools, parks, 
and street cleaning is to decrease progressively the pur- 



236 Efficiency in Government 

chasing power of every dollar of taxes paid. If a 
city's credit is not good its taxpayers can find it out, 
can learn the cause and compute their share of the 
penalty. If the goodness or badness of an officer is 
any concern of ours, we can point to definite results 
in our own home, our own business, our enjoyments and 
discomforts when outside our home or business. If un- 
able to relate effect to cause, we have not asked enough 
questions. Perhaps our content with the unknown will 
last until our dividends are cut, until typhoid takes 
away our son, until our father is sandbagged in broad 
daylight, or until our skirts are ruined on neglected 
streets, — until we see that we need a business doctor. 
For every man or group of men desiring to know 
the noteworthy things of a city, a state or of the 
United States, audience is insured by the existence of 
the permanent census bureau at Washington (estab- 
lished in 1901). For example, correctional and chari- 
table institutions (the law does not yet include non-in- 
stitutional agencies) have been notified that however 
small and however far remote, they are objects of in- 
terest to 80,000,000 people speaking through the cen- 
sus bureau. One of the best-known and best-qualified 
students of the country is in charge. He himself de- 
sires to know a great number of things about the forces 
that increase poverty and crime; is acquainted with 
hundreds of others who desire to know; possesses the 
technique of statistical inquiry on a large scale; and 
may be counted upon to make these reports so valuable 



Value of Permanent Census Bureau 237 

that the country will want to know more about relief 
societies, dispensaries, hospitals, home-finding agencies 
for dependent children, etc. Each census bulletin that 
reminds citizens of things they once wanted to know 
or ought to want to know, will make it easier for each 
succeeding volume to contain valuable information and 
for state and municipal census bureaus to be established 
and properly manned. As the scope of inquiry widens, 
public officers and the chiefs of industry will come 
themselves to feel increasing curiosity about their work 
and environment, as did a London resident who once 
replied to an inquiry, — "I have been asked so often 
these twenty years whose statue that was that I have 
half a mind to stop some day and find out." But 
grateful as we are for a permanent central bureau, 
proving the value of the statistical test of the nation's 
economic needs and economic growth, it is important 
to apply the efficiency test to national administration 
and to the use made by city and state officers of their 
powers and opportunities. 

What ought to be known about government depends 
upon what government is expected to do. What may 
be known depends upon what government does. What 
government does may be discovered only if what is 
done is properly recorded when it is done. Intelli- 
gence regarding efficiency or inefficiency depends upon 
ability to select proper units of inquiry, to count or 
weigh accurately, to learn the significance of compari- 
son by use of subtraction, percentages, summaries, and 



238 Efficiency in Government 

by skill in classifying where units counted are of dif- 
ferent kinds. With propriety these processes when 
testing efficiency in government are called the statisti- 
cal method, because they seek the noteworthy things of 
the state. In setting up certain standards of inquiry, 
record and interpretation, the following chapter will 
confine itself to those noteworthy facts that may be 
properly included in the term municipal statistics. 



XII 

Municipal Bureau of Statistics 

The purpose of a report to the public is to show what 
officials think the public ought to be told, or what the 
public insists upon knowing, about their efficiency and 
that of the departments they supervise. The financial 
report made by the city comptroller shows what that 
officer believes he is under obligation to tell, or what 
he wants the community to know, about his efficiency 
in controlling their finances. The mayor's report tells 
what he considers it necessary for the city to know 
regarding its last year's expenses, its future needs and 
his plans for meeting them. 

The purpose of records, on the other hand, is to tell 
the mayor, comptroller, department and division head 
what it is thought necessary for themselves to know if 
they are to reach that degree of efficiency which for 
them is considered the minimum. Conversely such facts 
as are not matter of record represent knowledge that 
the responsible officers are not conscious of needing 
in order to be as efficient as is demanded by their own 
standard or by the community's standard for them. 
When reports fail to compare service rendered with 
cost of that service, officers advertise that they do not 
consider their community entitled to know what its 



240 Municipal Bureau of Statistics 

taxes buy. When records fail to relate service and 
cost of service, officers advertise that they do not them- 
selves care to know whether their administration is 
economical or wasteful, efficient or inefficient. 

If efficiency is to be substituted for goodness as a test 
of government, every department will come to have, — 
(1) A system of records that tell the truth as to each 
day's experiment ; (2) A clearing house, or access to a 
clearing house, for these records that will enable the 
head of each department to measure his own efficiency 
as well as that of his subordinates. Thus the head of 
the school board will have his own complete statistical 
bureau. This means that every week, every month, 
every quarter, every year or on demand, summarised 
statements can be prepared by the school board or 
president or superintendent, whoever is recognised as 
head, measuring the efficiency of every school, of the 
schools as a whole and of every person connected with 
the system, including the directors themselves. The 
same would be true of other departments. 

But there are some officers responsible for more than 
one department, e. g., alderman, mayor, auditor, or in 
states, governor, secretary of state, legislator. Legis- 
lator and alderman cannot be sure that they are voting 
the proper amount of money for different purposes 
unless they have looked over a classified statistical sum- 
mary, showing the relative needs of different depart- 
ments and their relative efficiency. Likewise the 
ma} r or, governor or president can be sure that he is 



Help in Forming Budgets 241 

not voting to misappropriate funds only after he has 
examined a statistical summary of work done and work 
contemplated by different departments. One way to put 
responsible officials in possession of information neces- 
sary to intelligent action would be to have an indepen- 
dent statistical bureau organised for mayor, auditor, 
board of estimate and board of aldermen. Such dupli- 
cation would be very much better and very much 
cheaper than to have no bureau, but in practice there is 
no reason why the board of education and the super- 
intendent of schools should both keep all school facts 
necessary to efficient instruction and to efficient man- 
agement. One clearing house would bring together 
educational facts and administrative facts, cost facts 
and service facts, condensing in one report for man- 
agers and teachers the experience of the schools. 
Likewise there is no reason why the mayor, board of 
estimate, aldermen and comptroller should not use tran- 
scripts from the same summary compiled in one central 
bureau. At just what point the volume of city busi- 
ness requires subsidiary clearing houses in addition to a 
central clearing house is a practical question easily 
determined by a business doctor. 

Unless a central bureau brings together the statistics 
of all departments, those who distribute appropriations 
run the risk of being prejudiced by aggressive or in- 
gratiating department heads; at least they run the 
risk of making false judgments as to the imperative 
needs of different departments. It is because of this 



242 Municipal Bureau of Statistics 

failure to look at all departments with one standard 
that the horizontal cut in appropriation estimates is 
made, the assumption being that all estimates contain 
about the same percentage of water. Moreover, unless 
a central bureau sets side by side for each department 
the service rendered last year and its cost, the service 
contemplated next year and its estimated cost, the tax- 
payer is unable to exercise intelligent judgment at the 
one time during the year when he can make his wishes 
effective, i. £., when the budget is being made up. As 
a taxpayer, it is his only chance to protest against bad 
investment or injustice, to demand new constructive 
and preventive work, to express a choice for various 
investments offered and to decide what particular in- 
vestments he shall make. It is the only occasion when 
the goodness or badness of the taxpayer's representa- 
tive is condensed into one statement. 

Under the present system of preparing budgets the 
taxpayer's opinion, if by chance he happens to have 
one, is ineffective. I am writing in the midst of a 
state campaign, 1906. There is much talk of sin- 
cerity and insincerity, of political and financial cor- 
porations, of yellow and grey journalism, and of the 
danger of inoculating with badness the established or- 
der of things. In the meantime home rule, which is 
so jealously guarded in the winter time, when it is too 
late, is deciding for New York City how next year to 
divide $130,000,000 among various departments. 
This budget is four times that of the state of New 



An Object Lesson in Making a Budget 243 

York and affects the welfare of mothers and children, 
business men and taxpayers in New York City far 
more intimately than do state expenditures. Yet with 
the exception of a handful of citizens, practically no 
interest is taken and no intelligence shown with regard 
to the administrative results to be purchased by that 
budget. If other citizens should to-day decide to ex- 
press an intelligent interest in next year's budget, 
they would fail, for they would have begun too late. 
The fiscal authorities themselves are quite as helpless 
as the taxpaj^er, even though they may be giving more 
attention to budget details and budget politics. Not 
having facts, that is, not having purposes that would 
justify an increase in the tax rate, the mayor, the 
comptroller, the president of the board of aldermen 
and the five borough presidents are trying by legerde- 
main, remonstrance and equivocation to come out of 
the fray with a maximum of promises kept and a 
minimum of friends disappointed, while still within last 
year's tax rate. The budget itself will make a volume 
of about 130 pages quarto. No attempt is made to 
show what kind of work was done last year or what 
work can be done next year if funds requested are 
voted. If the board of estimate should to-day re- 
solve to acquiesce in the request of the board of alder- 
men for a budget explaining clearly the purpose for 
which money is asked, it would be unable to prepare 
such budget this year, for it would also have begun too 
late. 



244 Municipal Bureau of Statistics 

An object lesson in making a budget to fit work 
planned was presented to the board of estimate on 
Taxpayers' Day, October, 1906, by the Bureau of 
City Betterment. 1 Illustrations were chosen from 
the health department because no one dares openly 
excuse health inefficiency. Although that department 
works through forty distinct divisions, representing 
forty distinct fields or purposes, its salaries had previ- 
ously been given under eleven general grab-bag head- 
ings. Naturally the practice had been followed of 
robbing Peter to pay Paul by taking from this grab- 
bag according to the insistence of any one of forty 
activities. When a man was needed for No. 37, he was 
transferred or borrowed from No. 11 or No. 23, and 
milk inspection crippled to serve a temporary need in 
fighting the smoke nuisance, in answering complaints 
against garbage wagons or in transferring patients 
to a hospital. Of ninety-eight physicians on the pay- 
roll as school inspectors in Manhattan, only sixty-one 
were used for that purpose last year. These facts were 
not known to the heads of the board of estimate and 
apportionment or to the four representatives of the 
finance department, who had spent two months in 
preparing an expert opinion on the health board esti- 
mates. The only way to have found them out was to 
do as the private bureau did, disregard the names by 
which health employees were called and re-distribute 
their salaries according to the work done last year. 

1 See page 270. 



Budgets Are Insurance Policies 245 

To do this cost less than one-half what the city spent 
in making a futile investigation to secure a worthless 
opinion. Therefore, in deciding how much was to be 
given for salaries, the responsible officials saw only so 
many men to be paid and so many individual salaries 
to be increased. Health officers themselves admitted 
that the budget prepared by them gave an erroneous 
impression of what work the board of health would in 
all probability do with the money voted. 

When the board of estimate was asked to picture to 
itself clearly the kind of work and the quantity of each 
kind of work that it wished the board of health to do, 
the demand seemed so reasonable that several members 
asked why they had not thought of that themselves, 
and the epigram-making comptroller said, — "We 
have been blooming kids long enough." They con- 
sented, therefore, before passing this particular budget 
to ask themselves, — What various forms of protection 
against disease and nuisance does the city want to buy 
next year? A business man insures in separate poli- 
cies against fire, cyclone, theft, earthquake, accident 
or sickness ; should the city take out separate policies 
against diphtheria, unclean milk, waste of school 
child's energy, tuberculosis? Shall we deal rigidly 
with the first outbreak of typhoid or shall we keep the 
cases down to five hundred? Shall we save 350 of 
3,000 babies doomed to die from unclean milk if neg- 
lected, or shall we save 2,000 ; shall we see that every 
quart of milk is clean or one quart in 10,000? Shall 



246 Municipal Bureau of Statistics 

we find the physical defects that encourage contagion 
in three grades of forty schools or in every grade of 
five hundred schools ? Shall we provide money enough 
to care for advanced cases of tuberculosis, or shall we 
check its spread in the tenement and gradually make 
it as rare as typhoid? Shall we insure a $100,000 
building for its entire value or for one-tenth or one- 
thirtieth? If we want insurance, what kinds and how 
much shall we buy? If we want protection, what kinds 
and how much shall we buy? If we want healthful 
conditions, in how many parts of the city are we will- 
ing to pay for them? 

For 1906 the New York board of health was voted 
$500,000 in revenue bonds to meet what were called 
emergencies, which emergencies, however, were created 
when the budget was voted under eleven meaningless 
headings. A health budget classified according to kinds 
of protection needed and to places where protection 
is needed, will enable the fiscal authorities to provide 
for all needs of next year so far as last year's experi- 
ence throws light on next year's needs. One objection 
is immediately urged when we ask for a health budget 
adequate to health needs, i. c, important as is 
health, other departments are also important; the 
work of boroughs, schools, parks, street cleaning — all 
departments — should progress simultaneously. But 
the present system of determining whether or not de- 
partments are progressing simultaneously necessitates 
unequal progress. It is assumed that if the health 



Disclosing What Taxes Buy 247 

board gets an increase of 11% and the schools an in- 
crease of 11%, then, of course, there should be an in- 
crease of 11% in the appropriation of each borough 
president, each commissioner of parks, etc. For one 
commissioner to ask for a larger percentage increase 
than his colleagues receive would show selfishness and 
lack of willingness to do team work. The embarrass- 
ing position in which this horizontal cut principle 
places the fiscal board would disappear if a central 
bureau presented to the board of estimate, to the tax- 
payer and to the press a statement for all departments, 
showing not only what was spent last year, how it was 
spent and what beneficial results were obtained, but 
showing also what was left undone last year that the 
taxpayer wanted done. After all, it is for the taxpayer 
to decide whether he prefers to postpone the purchase 
of a park for one year, two or five, rather than neglect 
milk inspection. He ought to have a chance to decide 
between a speedway in Central Park and a playground 
for Little Italy ; between "plaster embellishments" and 
real marble for the Hall of Records ; between the pur- 
chase of athletic grounds for nines or elevens and 
medical examination that will qualify the 9,000 and 
11,000 to take part in the simple athletics of play- 
ground and street; between increase in salaries for 
certain bureau heads and protection against pneu- 
monia. 

If a central bureau presented clearly to the taxpayer 
the results obtainable by each expenditure proposed, 



248 Municipal Bureau of Statistics 

the absurd reverence for any particular tax rate would 
disappear. Many landlords, it is true, still limit re- 
pairs to a maximum percentage of each 3^ear's income. 
The most intelligent landlords, however, have learned 
that because "a stitch in time saves nine" it is very 
much better to spend one-fifth of one year's rent all 
at once for repairs that will last five years, than to 
spend 10% of each year's income in futile tinkering. 
Municipal statistics, properly marshalled, would en- 
able and compel the taxpayer to picture to himself the 
benefits offered by two, three or five different tax rates 
proposed, thus placing him in position to decide intel- 
ligently whether or not to spend $5 this year as a 
means of saving $25 next year or the year after. Such 
statistics would lead the taxpayer gradually to see 
that a high tax rate, plus satisfaction, is infinitely bet- 
ter for him than a low tax rate plus dissatisfaction. 
Little by little taxpayers would learn from experience 
that the present blind method of apportioning taxes 
not only piles up a debt on which they pay compound 
interest on blunders as well as on service, but with each 
succeeding year reduces the purchasing power of every 
dollar of taxes and of every dollar of income. 

The nearest approach to a bureau of municipal sta- 
tistics that we have in this country is the Statistics 
Department of Boston. From four to eleven bulletins 
are issued yearly giving statistical summaries indicated 
by its Table of Contents submitted herewith. 1 

Volume VIII — January, February and March, 1906. 



What Boston Learns About Boston 249 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 
J. Meteorological Observations: 
II. Movement of Population: 

1. Weekly Mortality. 

2. Monthly Mortality. 

3. Causes of Death by Sex. 

4. Causes of Death by Age Periods. 

5. Contagious and Infectious Diseases — Cases and 

Deaths. 

III. Burial Permits issued by the Board of Health. 

IV. Interments in City Cemeteries. 

V. Cremations at Forest Hills and Mt. Auburn. 
VI. Movement of Institutions Population: 

1. Total Number Supported or Aided. 

2. Pauper Institutions. 

3. Children's Institutions — A. 

4. Children's Institutions — B. 

5. House of Correction. 

6. Insane Hospital. 

7. City Hospital. 

8. City Hospital, South Department. 

VII. Immigration Statistics. 
VIII. Fire Department. 
IX. Health Department: 

1. Bureau of Cattle Inspection. 

2. Buildings Ordered Vacated or Demolished. 

3. Bureau of Milk Inspection. 

4. Bureau of Disinfection. 

5. Bureau of Sanitary Inspection. 

X. Library Department. 
XI. Statistics Relating to Real Estate. 
XII. Employment Certificates. 



250 Bureau of Municipal Statistics 

XIII. Police Department: 

1. Arrests. 

2. General work. 

XIV. Public Schools: 

1. Number of Pupils. 

2. Pupils in High and Latin Schools. 

XV. Coal Statistics. 
XVI. Public Baths. 
XVII. National Bank Statistics. 

XVIII. Commercial Statistics, Port of Boston: 

1. Number and Tonnage of Foreign Vessels. 

2. Value of Imports and Exports. 

3. Number and Tonnage of Coastwise Vessels. 

XIX. Receipts of Fish. 
XX. Statistics Relating to Flour Supply. 
XXI. Museum of Fine Arts — Number of Admissions. 

APPENDIX 

Statistical Showing of Reports, for 1904, of Incor- 
porated Charitable Institutions in Boston, includ- 
ing a Comparison with those of Massachusetts 
outside of Boston. 

It has exerted an important influence not only in its 
own city but upon methods of talking about govern- 
ment throughout the country. Valuable special re- 
ports have been published from time to time about tax 
rate, school census, receipts of milk, ward population, 
etc. "Every time politicians have attempted to rescind 
the ordinance that established the department, a sur- 
prising degree of public interest has been shown in 
opposing such endeavor. The usefulness of the de- 
partment in conducting special investigations or secur- 



Boston's Reports Defective 251 

ing particular information wished by members of the 
city government has increased and is increasing." It 
has been eulogised by so many eminent statistical au- 
thorities (and by the makers of the Model Municipal 
Program) that one hesitates to question either the con- 
tent of its reports, its purposes or the principles on 
which it is organised. But hazardous as it may seem, 
after reading its publications, visiting its office, ques- 
tioning Boston officials and civic leaders, I am satis- 
fied that this particular form of central bureau for 
municipal statistics should be copied only in part, if 
at all, by other cities. 

The reports of the Boston Statistics Department 
should not be followed: 

1. They fail to disclose inefficiency or efficiency. 
Their school statistics never informed Boston that 
she led the cities of the country in percentage of 
backward pupils. Statistics of milk inspection 
give no idea of violations of law, milk destroyed, 
fines imposed. 

2. They fail to compare service with cost of service. 

3. They fail to compare one year's facts with those 
of the year preceding, hence give no idea whether 
the city is going backward or forward in its busi- 
ness management. 

4. They fail so to relate different sets of facts pub- 
lished that the average citizen sees the significance 
of one in terms of the other. For example, 
cause, — decline in efficiency of the milk inspection 
or a protracted period of extreme heat, is not 



252 Bureau of Municipal Statistics 

connected in any way with effect, — a marked in- 
crease in infant mortality. 

5. They give not all essential facts as to all city 
activities, but a limited range of facts that it 
(the Statistics Department) sees fit. 

6. They have not attempted to convince the general 
public of its obligation to the Department and 
the advantage of giving it adequate support. It 
is receiving less money to-day than in 1897. 

The plan of organisation of Boston's Central Bureau 
of Statistics should not be copied: 

1. No voluntary bureau should have power to decide 
what information is not yet of sufficient value to 
be properly classified. The measure of need for 
statistical classification is not what any committee 
"sees fit," but rather the number of distinct things 
a city is trying to do and the number of general 
agents or divisions through which it works to ac- 
complish these ends. These are matters of fact, 
not of opinion. 

2. The Statistics Department is a volunteer board 
divorced from the cabinet of municipal officers 
who vote away and spend city money. 

3. Not having administrative results to accomplish, 
it has no power to prepare blanks of original 
entry. In a government organised for efficiency 
every blank issued would be devised with refer- 
ence to the ultimate statistical value of the in- 
formation called for on that blank. 

4. It has no power to make sure that its own reports 
are based upon correct summaries of original 
records. 

5. It does not maintain a clearing house accessible 
at all times to taxpayers and officers with per- 



Whatever-It- Sees-Fit Fallacy 253 

manent records of all facts in summary. Instead 
it confines its labours to those facts that at a par- 
ticular time it sees fit to publish. It may be ad- 
visable to entrust to a committee the selection of 
material to be published in a city document, but it 
should be possible for taxpayers to obtain a sum- 
mary of results in any department, even though 
the statistical authority does not regard this in- 
formation of sufficient general interest to warrant 
publication. 

6. It does not exemplify in its own office the business 
methods and principles of classification necessary 
for city departments. 

7. It has accepted for itself the role of special in- 
vestigator for department heads where it might 
have become special informant in advance of 
interest on the part of those officials. 

8. The Department, its original program and its 
later execution illustrate German precedent rather 
than Boston needs, — "The establishment of this 
Department was due to Mayor Quincy's study of 
municipal government in Europe. The Depart- 
ment was not established in response to what 
might be called a public demand." 

The "whatever-it-sees-fit," private-investigating-bu- 
reau idea has recently been copied by New York's de- 
partment of finance. That city would have rebelled 
against a suggestion to place in one official's hands 
power of turning street lights off or on at will to serve a 
political purpose, to protect a friend or to confound an 
enemy. But because citizens do not as yet associate 
statistics with light they indifferently looked on while 



254 Bureau of Municipal Statistics 

the comptroller secured from the state legislature a 
Bureau of Municipal Investigation with power to turn 
on the light where and when he sees fit. Several stu- 
dents saw that the New York replica not only copied 
the weaknesses of the Boston bureau, but had not even 
the saving grace of a non-partisan board to insure 
presumptively disinterested motive. There was at 
least one conference to consider open opposition to the 
bill. No action was taken, chiefly because no one sus- 
pected that the comptroller himself cared enough 
about his bill to persuade the mayor to approve it con- 
trary to the judgment of the latter's financial advisers. 
But the bill became a law and the bureau is well 
financed. What an opportunity was lost- — or post- 
poned — we shall see by reviewing briefly the events 
that led to its establishment. 

New York's first bureau of municipal statistics was 
an exotic, modelled on a foreign idea, not a local de- 
sire to know. Its results were so indefinite and so un- 
intelligible to the average man that Mayor Van Wyck 
was not seriously censured for discontinuing it. At 
the present time there are few men conversant with 
the social needs of New York City or with the tax- 
payer's interests who would wish to have the old bu- 
reau revived. Had its work been more significant it 
is probable that Mayor Low and his cabinet would have 
made an effort to secure either a modification of the 
charter, or would have proceeded under powers al- 
ready possessed, to establish a fact centre, by whatever 



New York's First Bureau Failed 255 

name it might be called. But even so late as Mayor 
Low's administration, 1901-1903, and although the 
public was aroused as never before to the need for so- 
called good government, neither Mayor Low nor his 
cabinet took one step to secure a statistical clearing 
house. Moreover no important step was taken by the 
mayor or any one of his department heads to secure 
for individual bureaus or for departments a method 
of describing service rendered, cost of that service or 
city needs that would make possible an intelligent 
judgment on the part either of the mayor, his subor- 
dinates, the press or the taxpayer. Hence it was that 
the public was ignorant of its obligation to the reform 
administration, just as it has previously been ignorant 
of its reason for resentment against Crokerism. Not 
having educated the public throughout their adminis- 
tration, the so-called reformers were compelled when 
seeking re-election to resort to the time-honoured 
method of fireworks, eulogy, indictment and tardy 
ex parte tabulation of selected results, instead of run- 
ning on the record, legible to all, of work done and 
pledges kept. Despite the high intentions that domi- 
nated its leaders the Low government left only an in- 
significant impression upon departmental methods. It 
was almost, if not quite, as easy for political heads to 
be inefficient and to conceal inefficiency after as before 
the "good men's" regime. So unconsciously was the 
importance of marshalling facts overlooked that the 
Low administration during its last week — Christmas, 



256 Bureau of Municipal Statistics 

1902 — permitted itself to be placed in the position of 
seeming to curtail the most popular features of the 
school system, — vacation and night schools, recreation 
centres and popular lectures. When a storm of indig- 
nation arose the administration had nothing on which 
to base its defence but a suspicion of extravagance on 
the part of the board of education. 

The first serious step toward securing municipal sta- 
tistics on which to base financial policy was made by 
Comptroller Grout when left alone to wrestle with the 
popular indignation resulting from the joint action of 
himself, Mayor Low and Borough President Swan- 
strom of Brooklyn. For several months the comp- 
troller, now on the defensive, employed special inves- 
tigators to inquire into the management of the public 
schools. Having been sent out to prove extravagance, 
and having a limited time in which to discover it, the 
investigators sought superficial evidence, instead of 
making public what must have promptly seemed clear 
to them, that no matter what its pedagogical scheme, 
the board of education, as at that time organised, 
using the business methods then in vogue, could no 
more prevent extravagance and disproportion of ex- 
pense and administration than an engine can help run- 
ning off the track if the rails are loose. Unfortunately 
the discussion was early diverted from efficient methods 
of recording school experience to criticism of so-called 
fads and frills. Instead of an impartial inquiry into 
the whole of the school system, evidence was selected 



Fiscal Tonic vs. Intelligence 257 

here and there, which when presented in bitter lan- 
guage had little effect except to inspire vindictiveness 
on the part of school officers. In other words, this 
protracted and expensive controversy was little more 
than a special plea for or against the board of educa- 
tion, the superintendent of schools and the curriculum 
in force. By making the educational authorities self- 
conscious the comptroller's fiscal tonic indirectly led 
to numerous economies and strengthened the hands of 
those commissioners who wanted efficiency. There was 
nothing to indicate in any of the comments on the 
school system that the comptroller himself realised 
that his own department, as well as practically every 
other department of the city, was suffering from the 
same disease. 

The defects of the city's original records and of 
department reports were first publicly recognised in 
Mayor McClellan's message, January, 1905, when he 
appointed a Finance Commission 1 to inquire into 
(1) taxation and revenue; (2) city debt and special 
assessments, and (3) existing methods of recording 
financial transactions and administrative results of 
city departments. 

ir The Commission has not yet reported, and consists of Edgar 
J. Levey, Chairman; (Taxation) Joseph Haag, Morris K. 
Jesup, Lawson Purdy, Prof. E. R. A. Seligman, Francis Lynde 
Stetson; (City Debt) Charles T. Barney, John J. Delany, 
John L. Cadwalder, Prof. Frank J. Goodnow, Edward M. 
Shepard; (Accounting) Prof. Frederick A. Cleveland, John 
Crane, Julian D. Fairchild, John C. Hertle, Herman Ridder. 



258 Bureau of Municipal Statistics 

Little headway was made, so far as the public was 
concerned, except to give the erroneous impression 
that conditions were improving until Comptroller Grout 
retired, for his experts declared that the mayor's com- 
mission was unnecessary and resented the implication 
that financial records and methods were not already 
satisfactory. The new comptroller, as shown in the 
last chapter, confessed quite freely, even swore to and 
about the failure of city records to throw light either 
on city need or city work. During the winter of 1906 
there was much discussion as to municipal accounting 
and municipal statistics at national conferences of 
bankers and others. After applauding Comptroller 
Metz for his insight and his pledges, authorities on 
finance failed to influence him in planning his statis- 
tical clearing house. 

The present bureau of municipal investigations is 
responsible solely to one of seven members of the board 
of estimate and apportionment, namely, the comp- 
troller. There is nothing in its charter to insure the 
automatic recording of original acts so as to furnish 
a basis for impartial statistics. It does not look be- 
yond the surface results obtainable in various depart- 
ments but accepts, apparently, the defective book- 
keeping and deficient statistics of those departments. 
Undertying a comptroller's investigation as well as a 
National People's Lobby must be records and sum- 
maries upon which the comptroller and the people may 
rely. 




FREDERICK A. CLEVELAND 

Chairman, Sub-Committee on Accounting, Finance 
Commission appointed by Mayor McClellan. 



Boston's Error Copied in New York 259 

The bureau was organised in June, 1 906, and for the 
first six months the only statements made by the press 
with regard to it concerned" the rate of compensation 
and the interest, influence or boss to whom its officers 
owed their appointment. As an illustration, one im- 
portant post is filled by a man of threefold distinction : 
(1) As stage manager of cart-tail speeches in behalf 
of reform; (2) As chief bartender of the Subway 
Tavern, which was a moral, social and financial failure ; 
(3) As deliverer of cart-tail speeches to Tammany. 
More recently the discredited head of a bureau whose 
inefficiency reached notorious proportions was trans- 
ferred, after "public exoneration," to a post as expert 
in the bureau. Although manned in time to have in- 
fluenced the character of the budget for 1907, it found 
out nothing and suggested nothing to reduce the mis- 
appropriations and uncertainties of that budget. It 
is doubtful if the brreau as at present organised can 
ever overcome the obstacles presented by the statutory 
definition of its purpose, i. e., to make special investi- 
gations for the comptroller. In November, 1906, it 
was directed by the board of estimate and apportion- 
ment to recommend by May 1, 1907, a plan for pro- 
ducing a businesslike budget for the year 1908. There 
is reason to fear that it will not only fail to carry this 
message to Garcia, but that by May 1st it will have 
forgotten Garcia's name and the significance of his 
position. Its fundamental idea is incompatible with 
adequate statistical service. Instead of sifting, sum- 



260 Bureau if Municipal Statistics 

marising and classifying information descriptive of 
each important governmental function, without regard 
to any one's opinion of the work to be described ; in- 
stead of presenting things that are comparable side 
by side ; instead of showing the value of each line of 
service in terms of other service purchasable by the 
same expenditure, this bureau has thus far avowed 
no other purpose than to make certain inquiries after 
the comptroller has decided that for one reason or an- 
other he would like to know more about some special 
subject. 

The central bureau of municipal statistics that ef- 
ficiency demands will present official facts and interest- 
ing questions which would otherwise escape the atten- 
tion of taxpayer and officer. The statistics themselves, 
when automatically recorded and properly classified, 
will call attention to weak links in the administrative 
chain. There is as much difference between an inves- 
tigating bureau that looks out for only those things 
that a particular city officer happens to be interested 
in or provoked about, and a municipal bureau that tells 
the truth clearly regarding every city activity without 
fear or favour, as there is between a modern fire de- 
partment with electric signals and the old-style volun- 
teer bucket brigade. A government fact centre should 
belong to taxpayers and not to officials. Until the 
Boston plan has more evidence to offer than it can yet 
show, it will be safe for cities like Philadelphia, Chi- 
cago and New Orleans to experiment with a bureau 



An Efficient Fact Centre 261 

that shall be subject to the fiscal authority and respon- 
sive to demands of administrative heads and taxpayers. 
In smaller communities that place the purse in control 
of aldermen and mayor without the intervention of a 
fiscal board it will probably be wise to hold the mayor 
responsible for municipal statistics. Every public ad- 
ministrative centre should have a fact centre. It is 
just as important for a township of ten school dis- 
tricts as for a city with ten wards, though for some 
time to come efficiency of townships will depend largely 
upon state law enforcing uniform and adequate 
records and reports audited and perhaps published by 
the state. Just what the bureau should be, how many 
desks it should contain, what changes it should make 
in original records, how many officers it should employ 
are matters that must be decided with regard to each 
local situation, aided by a state clearing house for uni- 
form local reports. Happily they are matters that 
business experience enables the business doctor to de- 
cide quickly after a thorough examination is made. 

A statistical summary should always represent a 
circle of facts equal to the interest to be determined 
by a man's judgment. So far as a public official ought 
to know more than a taxpayer, so far as his responsi- 
bility exceeds that of the taxpayer, it is proper for him 
to have information inaccessible to the taxpayer. If, 
however, it be true, as we have been taught to believe, 
that our government is representative, and that the 
taxpayer — the man who pays taxes in money or the 



262 Bureau of Municipal Statistics 

man who pays taxes in labour — is really the one who 
governs and has only delegated his authority as a mat- 
ter of convenience to himself; if it be true that the 
elected official is smaller than the body he represents, 
then a fact centre, always accessible, always contain- 
ing a maximum of information known to a community 
about itself, is as much the right of the taxpayer as is 
his vote. Fear will be expressed here and there that 
the taxpayer cannot afford a central bureau. As we 
have seen in business, in administration of hospital, 
school, charity and church, wherever and whenever a 
task is worth doing, it is worth doing efficiently. No 
task is so slight, no investigation so small, no effect so 
insignificant that it is not worth while to know its 
significance. A library worth having is worth cata- 
loguing. Marceline, the clown in the New York 
Hippodrome, has a life contract for making the crowds 
laugh at a man who is always so busy that he cannot 
do anything right ; cities may not wisely copy his 
example. No community is so poor as not to be able 
to afford classified records. No community is rich 
enough to afford unclassified records. Nowhere in the 
world can experience be classified without a clearing 
house no matter what its name, where facts may be 
sorted, tagged, lined up according to height, made to 
tell the public the meaning of its experience and made 
to throw light upon the path that leads to what we 
have in mind when we speak of good government by 
good men. 



XIII 

Efficiency in Civic Leadership 

There is no royal road to efficiency in volunteer work. 
The man who gives time or money must take the steps 
that are necessary for paid officials, if he is to fit him- 
self to distinguish between fact and fancy. He must 
first want to know the important things about the 
whole of the field in which he works. He must count, 
after learning what units of inquiry to count. He 
must classify, compare, summarise. The world will 
not go to pieces, it may not even rebuke him, if he fails 
or refuses to take these steps. On the other hand, it 
will properly refuse to follow his lead and will distrust 
his recommendations. "Every little helps a little" is 
not always true, for often the littles postpone for 
months and years the achievement of great ends. 
Money will accomplish wonders, but unless accom- 
panied by consistent mental effort, it cannot purchase 
for its possessor sound judgment regarding public 
affairs. 

The particular brand of intelligence needed by 
government is intelligence with regard to govern- 
ment and not intelligence with regard to ethics, fiction, 
law and business. A man may be a walking dictionary, 
a living encyclopedia, a bacteriological laboratory, or 



264 Efficiency in Civic Leadership 

the personification of virtue, but these will not make 
him intelligent as to government. Given a hundred 
so-called best citizens in a millionaire's parlour, and a 
hundred frequenters of a Bowery saloon, and it would 
be a rash man who would feel sure that the average in- 
telligence as to government, its needs, its justice, its 
methods is higher in the parlour than in the saloon. 

In computing the average of intelligence as to gov- 
ernment, we have to consider the intensity and momen- 
tum of the few who are earnestly trying to better gov- 
ernment, as well as the inertia of the vast majority 
who as yet prefer heroes and scandal to intelligence 
and efficiency. 

Here and there the active few will secure for all 
classes benefits that the rank and file are not conscious 
of wanting, but, generally speaking, government and 
government statistics will represent only average in- 
terest in public affairs. It is, therefore, to be expected 
that the active minority will always try for more than 
the public is ready to give or to receive. 

". . . . A man's reach should exceed his grasp 
Or what's a heaven for." 

Democracy's greatest problem is this, how can we 
utilise without excessive waste the tremendous potential 
force of the small percentage who, feeling keenly the 
injustice, the discrepancies and inefficiencies of gov- 
ernment, are willing to make sacrifices, if thus they ca,n 
help remove discrepancy, inefficiency and injustice. 

To-day there is enormous waste of civic interest *md 



Inveterate Good Citizens 265 

of potentially efficient citizenship. Everywhere it is the 
same story, the handful of citizens striving to lead 
their communities upward and forward are compelled 
to be superficial and to flit from one important sub- 
ject to another. They appear before the City Fathers 
for the whole gamut of social needs, now for more 
school buildings, next week against more school build- 
ings if located in small parks ; to-day for a park in 
the south end, to-morrow against a park on the west 
side. Legislators and executives come to recognise the 
old familiar faces and the veteran arguments re- 
dressed by substitution of milk for tenement in ap- 
peals for more inspection, or by inserting removal 
where appointment was used when last discussing a 
commission. When new issues arise, instead of enlist- 
ing new faces and new arguments, our battle-scarred 
soldiers of the common good speak their lightning- 
change pieces with the vigour and optimism that have 
earned them the opprobrious titles, — rounders, fad- 
dists, enthusiasts, professional reformers bent on mind- 
ing other people's business, outsiders interfering with 
the affairs of paid officials. 

Not having superior information to interest and im- 
press officer and public, we good-intentioned advocates 
of social betterment often hurt the cause we plead. I 
have in mind two public hearings on matters that had 
been given a great deal of forced agitation. At one 
the need for a park in a certain congested neighbor- 
hood was lost sight of, in a wrangle of two factions of 



266 Efficiency in Civic Leadership 

good people over the question whether one gas house 
plus two abattoirs was more offensive and detrimental 
to health than one abattoir plus two gas houses. At the 
other hearing an earnest, vivacious woman, well known 
for sympathy and goodness, made a scintillating, al- 
most blinding, appeal for the poor, whom, like Napo- 
leon, she so much loved. The chairman answered, — 
"Mrs. X., if a man had spoken as have you, I should 
reply : Point one, froth ; point two, impractical ; 
point three, emotion; point four, chimerical. But 
with Mrs. X., I am in hearty accord." And there the 
matter has rested to this day. 

The principles to be followed, if volunteer bodies are 
to lead and not mislead public opinion, are ably laid 
down in a letter written by an experienced observer, 
who regrets the failure of a certain publicity cam- 
paign. 

"In using publicity as a weapon it is not sufficient to 
enlist the attention of the thinking few. They do not 
constitute public opinion, especially that rough and 
ready public opinion that brings about prompt re- 
sults. To create effective public opinion, the mass of 
readers must be interested and convinced. And who 
are these readers ? They are men and women busy with 
their own little affairs, mildly curious about outside 
happenings, willing to be informed providing the 
obtaining of the information does not take too much 
time or cause too much mental effort, quickly re- 
sponsive to an appeal that really moves them, but 
absolutely impervious to academic argument or to 
tepid intimations. 



How to Use Facts 267 

"The attitude of the majority of readers towards any 
one who tries to reach them is substantially this, — If 
you have any facts to submit to us, state them and 
state them plainly. If you perceive any conclusions 
that should be drawn from those facts, point them out 
to us explicitly and definitely. If they show derelic- 
tions of duty or wrongdoing of any kind, tell us so 
and tell us why. We are willing to listen to you if 
you have something to say and the courage to say it 
plainly, but if you are yourself in the mood of hesi- 
tating intimation don't bother us until you have 
reached a conclusion that }^ou are willing to stand for. 

"I would not publish a fact as a fact until it had 
clearly been ascertained to be a fact — not evolved from 
the depths of our consciousness, but tested and proved 
by investigation. I would be very careful not to pre- 
sent an argument or conclusion based upon those facts 
unless I was sure that it is a logical argument and also 
a self-evident conclusion. But having thus ascertained 
our facts and reached our conclusions, I would present 
them to the public in the most precise, direct, definite 
and forcible language we can command, mincing no 
words and dodging no conclusions. 

"The failure to grasp this is the fundamental reason 
why bodies like ours nearly always fail in their 
attempts to lead public opinion. Among those who 
really mould public opinion, and who are experts at it, 
these amateur efforts are either laughed at or regarded 
with a mild disdain. They are viewed as an example 
of good intention, but wasted effort, and it is clearly 
understood that unless our tentative overtures are taken 
up and emphasised by those who really know how 
public opinion is shaped, the air has simply been vext 
with blank cartridges." 



26B Efficiency in Civic Leadership 

To get facts, verify facts, base our conclusions on 
facts and then publish them so as to enlighten and 
convince public opinion, is not so easy as it sounds. 
Facts cost money ; facts cost time ; facts cost both time 
and money, a great deal of both, and more of both 
than the average volunteer agency is able to secure 
from the contributing public. Sick babies still sur- 
pass facts as a magnet for gifts of money and time. 
It is for these gifts that the honey bee hurriedly flits 
from flower to flower, shunning the margin of dimin- 
ishing returns and intensive cultivation. Givers want to 
see things done rather than light shed. Few civic and 
charitable societies are able to gather, compile, inter- 
pret and publish facts fast enough to convince the 
average giver that things are being done. Hence the 
search for some new thing to do or some new way of 
describing old things done again — money must be had 
and annual reports must furnish justification for fur- 
ther appeals. It is a simple evolutionary principle 
that is followed by civic leaders when they "bombard 
Gibraltar with green peas." Gibraltar remains to be 
bombarded another day. Green peas give excuse for 
noise, and strange as it may seem to outsiders, noise 
brings credit for a time a few times, and while it lasts 
credit brings money. Because doing things is more 
promptly remunerative than throwing light, civic 
movements intended to be primarily educational often 
add charity for a noisemaker. These incidental 
activities are like narcotics in their demand for ever in- 



Social vs. Personal Service 269 

creasing doses. In a surprisingly short time neigh- 
bourhood houses intended to bring uptown and down- 
town into co-operation for the improvement of gov- 
ernment agencies belonging to both, become relief bu- 
reaus and schools and dispensaries ; thus movements 
designed to light a city degenerate into candle exhibits 
under a bushel. Attention is diverted from a munici- 
pal bath house capable of bathing 9,000 tenement resi- 
dents a day to the three shower baths of a church club ; 
from the housing conditions of two million souls to a 
block of model tenements for forty families ; from 
200,000 children behind their proper grade in school 
to a dozen Swedish maids who want to learn English ; 
from the crusade against consumption to a hospital 
for twenty or two hundred consumptives; from uni- 
versal education to higher education for women. Pic- 
tures are taken of hot-house trees on a 10x40 roof 
garden maintained by private philanthropy, while 
truckmen razing buildings for a proposed public park 
nearby cut down fifty trees because "It's aisy to back 
up fer brick, mum." A philanthropist spends a hun- 
dred times as much in pasteurising a fraction of a 
city's milk supply as would produce facts to persuade 
a community to protect its entire milk supply by pro- 
curing clean dairies and clean milk shops. 

Given civic energy concentrated on personal work, 
plus zeal for constructive social work, and all the con- 
ditions exist for inefficient civic leadership. This is not 
to say that personal work is not laudable, but merely to 



270 Efficiency in Civic Leadership 

affirm that it is so remotely civic in its results that not 
infrequently it may with best of motives hurt, not help, 
the community as a whole. 

Efficient civic leadership is based, like Andrew 
Carnegie's fortune, upon "the divine right of delega- 
tion." Something must be left for existing institu- 
tions and for their leaders to do. To harness a whole' 
community to an idea is infinitely better than to try 
to carry it alone. To do on an infinitesimal scale in 
one district for one group of persons what schools, 
health officers and parks can be made to do for all per- 
sons in all districts is a wasteful expenditure of social 
energy. We have already seen how efficient leadership 
at the Taxpayers' Hearing of October, 1906, before 
the New York Board of Estimate and Apportionment 
paid high social dividends on an investment of $500. 
When Taxpayer's Day was prescribed by the charter, 
many reformers felt that henceforth the annual bud- 
get would of course express the taxpayer's wishes. 
While not expecting citizens to appear en masse each 
year, it was felt that city officers would be profoundly 
influenced by the mere knowledge that one particular 
day was set aside for taxpayers to question each year's 
budget. But reformers did not take into account the 
helplessness of taxpayers in the presence of a 
budget that even the mayor and comptroller could 
not understand. As few people were willing to 
run the risk of showing their ignorance, Taxpayers' 
Hearing necessarily became a mere form. On the day 



Taxpayer's Day, 1906 271 

in question a full calendar of routine business was pro- 
vided, showing that the members of the fiscal board had 
intended to adjourn after perfunctorily asking, — 
"Are any taxpayers present to speak on the budget?" 
Such was their surprise and indignation upon seeing a 
roomful of men and women who might want to talk, 
that one official is said to have remarked to a col- 
league, — "Isn't this the worst bunch of citizens ever?" 
"The bunch of citizens" offered first a health budget, 
based upon last year's health work, not upon last year's 
mis-guesses. The secretary of the Bureau of City 
Betterment began: — "Your honourable board has in 
the past granted money to the board of health for 
eleven general divisions. There are, however, forty 
divisions, each of which has its special work to do. 
The thoroughness and extent of the work of each di- 
vision determines the health conditions of the city as a 
whole. We ask that before voting this budget you 
demand information respecting the work of the health 
department in ever}' division for which an appropria- 
tion is needed." The mayor interrupted at this point 
and said that while the gentleman's remarks were very 
interesting, he could not see that they were pertinent 
to the occasion. The relevancy of the suggestion was 
then explained to the fiscal authorities more clearly 
than they were prepared to expect. Facts were pro- 
duced regarding the department of health not known 
to the department of health itself, to the mayor, the 
comptroller or other members of the board of esti- 



272 Efficiency in Civic Leadership 

mate and apportionment. The speaker reminded them 
that they were deciding a question not of dollars but of 
human life, the number of babies that would needlessly 
die, the school children who would suffer from remov- 
able physical defects. He described for the general 
public the unbusinesslike practice of voting away mil- 
lions for salaries without knowing the work to be done 
by means of those salaries, in fact without even learn- 
ing that they were not used for the purposes adver- 
tised. He might have recalled an appropriation of 
the year before voted the department of education 
for vacation schools but not so used, although more 
than the equivalent of the sum diverted from the 
purpose was used for increasing the salaries of the 
supervising staff. If the protest against present meth- 
ods of accounting and budget making had been based 
upon hearsay or upon the uninformed goodness of the 
protestors, nothing would have happened after ad- 
journment. Being based, however, upon a count and 
classification of last year's payroll according to work 
accomplished and not according to title carried by 
employees, and upon further facts offered by a district 
superintendent of schools and others familiar with the 
benefits of physical examination of school children, the 
appeal effected the following results: 

1. An increase of $100,000 for school inspection. 

2. A health budget showing work planned, with its 
funds segregated to insure the execution of the 
plan. 



Model Budget via Model Accounting 273 

3. The board of estimate and apportionment by 
resolution instructed the finance department to 
submit estimates for next year's budget so as to 
show work done in 1907 and work contemplated 
for 1908 in every department, which step cannot 
be taken unless 

4. All city records are reorganised so as to show 
work done and cost of that work for every de- 
partment. 

The attendance on Taxpayers' Day testifies to New 
York's need for efficient, informed leaders in municipal 
affairs. The preceding year had been one of disquiet- 
ing revelations as to corruption in politics and in high 
finance. The hearing was held in the midst of a cam- 
paign described by the victorious candidate for gov- 
ernor as a trial of the conscience of the people, an issue 
between the good and the bad. Good motives were be- 
ing eulogised, agitated, fairly churned. Never before 
had so many worn the goodness button. Yet on this 
last and only occasion for defining the kind of gov- 
ernment the metropolis of America was to have next 
year, not one popular idol was present, not one in- 
veterate good citizen, not one of the gentlemen of 
means whose respectability is supposed to be a bulwark 
against bad government, not a political reformer and 
not a muck raker. Nobody appeared for cleaner and 
safer streets, more playgrounds, more kindergartens, 
popular lectures, school sittings, patrolmen, for indus- 
trial education or for economy and efficiency in city ex- 
penditures. One man did appear against a crematory 



274 Efficiency in Civic Leadership 

near his residence, but he was ruled out of order be- 
cause he could not find the place in the budget where a 
crematory was mentioned ; in fact he was not even sure 
that it was called by that name. The State Charities 
Aid Association presented cogent reasons, based upon 
a clear analysis of the facts, for paying better salaries 
to nurses in city hospitals. Without these two and the 
unexpected demand for intelligent, adequate health 
appropriations, the fiscal board, about to vote away 
$40 for every individual in the city, would have been 
without one influence from the taxpayer and voter — 
up to last year's tax rate, which they dared not in- 
crease. 

The ultimate efficient state will stigmatise post- 
budget expressions of virtuous indignation as a weak 
substitute for intelligent ante-budget demands and 
arguments. Failure to take timely intelligent interest 
in budget appropriations will disqualify a civic leader 
from criticising authorities for carrying out those 
very proposals. Drawing paper swords on the dragon 
of corruption will be seen to raise the level of public 
intelligence in much the same degree as signing a 
note settles a store account. 

If we assume that for all time there will be a great 
diversity of interest and of special knowledge, the 
equal development of the state will require a multipli- 
cation of volunteer agencies whose special business it 
shall be to inform the public constantly of its rights, 
opportunities and needs, each agency giving that 




ROBERT W. DE FOREST 

President of the New York Charity Organization Society, 
Chairman, New York Tenement House Commission, and first 
Commissioner of the Tenement House Department. 



The Ultimate Efficient State 275 

knowledge in which it specialises. How society as a 
whole may benefit from a division of labour and from 
specialisation of knowledge may be illustrated by the 
spectrum. What we call light is known to consist of 
rays of different lengths and different colours. When 
passed through a spectrum, white light breaks into 
long and short rays of distinct colours — violet, 
blue, green, red, yellow. 




So facts regarding government vary in colour, 
length, kind and significance. A municipal bureau of 
statistics would act as a spectrum separating essential 
facts as to respective fields, so that the school rays 
would be kept distinct from prison rays, health rays, 
etc. But, as shown in the diagram, health rays unin- 
terpreted by the active few who are giving health mat- 
ters their particular attention, appeal to the intelligence 
of but a small section of public opinion. Without 
efficient leadership, therefore, the benefits of a munici- 



276 Efficiency in Civic Leadership 

pal bureau of statistics will be lost upon the vast major- 
ity of those capable of comprehending city experience 
and city needs. Efficient use of a municipal bureau 
of statistics requires that school rays pass through an- 
other spectrum provided by a volunteer body, to be 
called perhaps a public education association, which 
shall break these rays up into their component parts, 
— work done, work undone, experiments made, lessons 
taught, backward pupils, defective records — and then 
by a mirror casting the light of its interpretation 
upon an entire community. Likewise the state chari- 
ties aid associations will absorb, and give back inter- 
preted, the rays that disclose lessons regarding alms- 
houses and insane asylums ; prison associations will 
give the public the benefit of special knowledge and in- 
terest pertaining to prevention of crime ; metropolitan 
associations having to do with parks, kindergartens, 
day nurseries, art, sanitation and playgrounds will 
quickly absorb their special colours and help the public 
determine upon next year's blends. If any one agency 
fails to absorb and interpret and publish the facts 
entrusted to it, next year's work in its department 
will lose ground. Whether a particular agency 
is efficient, whether its rays come from a gas jet, 
an arc light or a flickering beacon, depends upon 
its efficiency in absorbing, interpreting and pub- 
lishing the experience of city, county, state or nation. 
The private fact centre should be connected with the 
public fact centre or municipal bureau of statistics, 



Automatic Transmission of Facts 277 

as a telephone switch with a telephone centre, whence 
facts of importance, like rays from the spectrum, 
would be transmitted automatically to the volunteer 
spectrum and there translated into language intelli- 
gible to a general public. No one would be permitted 
to talk who was not connected with one or more cen- 
tres. 

The number of individual fact centres will depend 
upon the number of separate fields of civic en- 
deavour that are efficiently organised. Preceding 
chapters have shown several fields that are as yet inade- 
quately lighted and now require technical efficiency on 
the part of officials and leaders. Other fields will read- 
ily occur to the reader: parks, playgrounds, housing, 
day nurseries, pure foods, unsanitary conditions, in- 
fant mortality, mental defectives, school ventilation, 
school curriculum, flexible grading, child labour, 
woman's work, employment for the left overs and mis- 
fits, public art, the small city, immigration, public be- 
quests, public subsidy of private philanthropy, loan 
sharks, sources of vice, white slave traffic, teaching of 
civics in schools, county and township government sal- 
aries, civil service reform, standard of living. The 
number of fact centres needed by a particular indi- 
vidual depends upon the number of different fields with 
regard to which that individual exercises judgment. 
The experience involved in securing facts as the basis 
of opinion would undoubtedly lead to the consolidation 
of societies that now devote themselves to one phase 



278 Efficiency in Civic Leadership 

of a general subject or to one portion of a district 
needing attention. Such consolidation will make it 
possible for each subscriber to possess the aggregate 
of information gathered and published by all agencies. 
The Institute for Municipal Research will suggest 
from time to time new lines of inquiry that should be 
undertaken. Moreover, it will aid efficient societies to 
work together so that they can present a solid front to 
the city and not dissipate their energies by working 
against each other. Such a central bureau interpret- 
ing public and official knowledge will be of inestimable 
value in shaping budgets, for it will possess all the 
facts necessary to show whether a demand for an ad- 
vance in schools or parks or for some social experiment 
must be at the expense of some other more important 
municipal activity. 



XIV 

Brief for the Establishment of an Institute for 
Municipal Research 1 

Municipal government is engaging the attention of 
earnest men and women in every part of the United 
States, more particularly in large cities, as never be- 
fore. 

That those who want "good government" are in the 
majority recent events, — east, west, north, south, — 
have proved conclusively. 

Desire for what is called "good government" existed 
prior to the municipal campaign of 1905, and will 
exist long after the present surface tumult has sub- 
sided. 

The enthusiasm and concerted action of those desir- 
ing good government was due to temporary clear 
vision with respect to the single issue, supposed good 
intention against supposed evil intention in govern- 
ment. 

Clear vision may result from skilled or reiterated 
presentation of fact or apparent fact as well as from 

Prepared in November, 1905, immediately after the then- 
called moral unheaval that led so many newspapers, maga- 
zines and exponents of goodness to prophesy the disappearance 
of the boss. 



280 Institute for Municipal Research 

accident, catastrophe, scandal, hero worship, excite- 
ment or passion. Christian living is possible without 
the extravagance of revival and camp meeting. 
Readers of high-class newspapers do not lament the 
absence of sensational pictures, misleading headlines, 
gross exaggeration and falsification. Large appro- 
priations for protection to health and property are 
made regularly without waiting for epidemics and con- 
flagrations ; streets are lighted and patroled, as a mat- 
ter of course, to make it obviously dangerous to com- 
mit crimes of violence, and to give a sense of security 
to citizens. By means of facts regarding the extent, 
cost, cause, curability and preventability of tubercu- 
losis, the crusade against that scourge has in a com- 
paratively short time produced upon the average mind 
vivid impressions far more persistent and beneficial 
than those produced by epidemics of yellow fever, ty- 
phoid or smallpox, or by such catastrophes as the 
burning of the Iroquois Theatre and the Slocum Ex- 
cursion Boat. 

Continued clear vision with regard to problems of 
municipal government is not possible at the present 
time for even the most intelligent citizen, because no- 
body knows the facts. 

So little are the facts of municipal government un- 
derstood that even the so-called moral upheaval of No- 
vember last against supposed evil intention in gov- 
ernment, did not bring with it the realisation that gov- 
ernment cannot be good unless it is efficient, no matter 



Facts Lacking for Sound Judgment 281 

how honest the official. An honest man, ignorant of 
the etiology of disease and the legal and medical 
agencies for preventing and controlling it, will fail to 
protect water, milk and food from pollution, to control 
infection when discovered and to arrest at their source 
causes that make for decreased vitality. In private 
affairs repeated experience has caused all but the least 
intelligent of the community to realise that good ser- 
vice means efficient service, and that an honest man 
who is inefficient can do more to defeat the purpose for 
which he is employed, than a dishonest man compelled 
by intelligent supervision to render efficient service. 

In the absence of facts regarding municipal govern- 
ment, its diseases and their remedies and its possibili- 
ties for common benefit if properly directed, we can- 
not hope to retain permanently the high ground at 
present occupied by the average citizen with respect 
to the dangers of what he calls bad government. Much 
less can we expect his present aroused conscience, unin- 
formed, to show him the danger and expensiveness of 
inefficient government, or the benefits to be derived 
from efficient administration of municipal business. 

Up to the present time no mechanism has been evolved 
for furnishing either leaders or followers with the facts 
necessary to sound judgment regarding problems of 
municipal government or the acts and pretensions of 
officials and candidates. Almost without exception so- 
called reform governments have emphasised goodness 
rather than efficiency, and have, like their corrupt 



282 Institute for Municipal Research 

predecessors, failed to see or emphasise the need for a 
mechanism of effective cumulative publicity. 

The production of intelligence has not been under- 
taken by governing officials for obvious reasons: (1) 
Party discipline subordinates fact to expediency. 

(2) Officials have been chosen for service to party, — 
past or prospective — rather than for fitness to perform 
public duties assumed ; or perhaps good men have been 
placed in office to rebuke bad men or to carry out a 
program that a knowledge of actual conditions 
would have shown in advance to be impracticable. 

(3) Those officers who determine the character of 
statement given out to the public have, for the most 
part, been exempt from civil service provisions, there- 
fore have not held office long enough to discover needs 
and devise remedies even if desiring to do so ; when re- 
turned to office, it has seemed more expedient to devote 
their energies to policies that have actually resulted 
in perverting facts rather than to methods that would 
discover and present the truth. (4) Frequent changes 
of officers occup}dng high positions have prevented the 
development of continuous policy, the existence of 
continuing memory or clear understanding of the 
facts on the part of those charged with municipal gov- 
ernment. (5) Not having intelligence, officials and 
their subordinates have naturally been unable to im- 
part it to the public. 

Whatever facts we now possess with regard to the 
fundamental nature and inner workings of municipal 



Facts Cost Money 283 

government we owe chiefly to voluntary associations. 
Notable examples are the sanitary associations that 
have educated the public to demand stringent health 
legislation and increasingly effective administration ; 
and charitable associations that have achieved signifi- 
cant reforms, such as the segregation of sexes in alms- 
houses and gaols, the placing of children in homes in- 
stead of poorhouses and asylums, probation of juve- 
nile and adult offenders, medical care for the insane 
and imbecile, prohibition of out-door relief, enactment 
of child labour and compulsory education laws, state 
supervision of charities and correction. In these so- 
called social fields it has been possible by fairly con- 
tinuous educational pressure to secure a high degree 
of general intelligence, (still elementary, however, 
and limited to what ought to be ) , that is without anal- 
ogy in that field suggested by the terms municipal, 
political and governmental. This higher standard of 
intelligence with regard to social aspects of govern- 
ment has cost considerable sums of money and untold 
hours of labour. Those who have given money and 
time are, as a rule, already overtaxed, and can hardly 
be expected to undertake similar work in the more com- 
prehensive field of municipal government. Histori- 
cally, it has been found extremely difficult to interest 
men and women in constructive civic work before they 
have been interested in philanthropic work; it would 
seem visionary, therefore, to expect to arouse a gen- 
eral interest in attempts to secure facts regarding 



284 Institute for Municipal Research 

municipal government among those elements of society 
whose interest has not already been pre-empted by so- 
called social work. 

If we are ever to have an efficient agent for produc- 
ing intelligence with regard to the whole field of 
municipal government, we must look to some other 
source than (1) officials who thrive upon confusion, or 
(2) voluntary associations already undertaking more 
than they can do thoroughly, and tempted by the exi- 
gencies of their support to confine their activity to 
fields where quick and obvious results are obtainable. 

The supreme need, therefore, in the field of munici- 
pal government is an agency dependent neither upon 
politics nor upon an average public intelligence that 
lacks the facts necessary to comprehend the need for 
such agency. This agency should be guaranteed in ad- 
vance freedom from the necessity either of compromis- 
ing its statement of fact, or of doing superficial work 
in order to secure popular support. It should be com- 
pletely equipped and clearly instructed (1) to collect, 
(2) to classify, (3) to compile, (4) to make ready for 
general publication, perhaps itself to publish, signifi- 
cant facts regarding municipal government, (5) to 
establish standards of scientific method in collecting, 
classifying and publishing facts with a view to being 
helpful to officials, volunteers, editors and students in 
every part of the country. In other words, the supreme 
need is for an intelligence centre that will substitute 
fact for calamity or scandal as teacher to citizenship, 



Work to be Done 285 

and by increasing the number who reason from fact to 
policy, tend gradually to abolish reactionary, revolu- 
tionary or blundering leadership, while progressively 
diminishing the extremes to which such leadership may 
go in defeating or misrepresenting the protective, 
benevolent and constructive purposes of government. 
If the foregoing premises are accepted, if it is ad- 
mitted that there is an urgent need for an Institute for 
Municipal Research, three practical questions remain 
to be answered : ( 1 ) What work should be undertaken, 
namely, what facts should be collected, classified, co- 
ordinated, compiled and published? (2) What mech- 
anism is necessary for doing this work? (3) In what 
city shall the work of research begin? 



WORK TO BE DONE 

BY THE 

INSTITUTE FOR MUNICIPAL RESEARCH 

1. Analysis of annual budgets. 

2. Examination of departmental reports from the 
standpoint of the taxpayers' interest in results 
accomplished. 

3. Critical study of the finance department's present 
attempts to give publicity through the City 
Record. 

4. Scientific study of the framework of government : 

(a) Charter provisions. 

(b) Organisation of departments. 

(c) Methods of control. 



286 Institute for Municipal Research 

5. Minute analysis of facts regarding different de- 
partments, — organisation, expense, results ob- 
tained and methods of presenting results — educa- 
tion, health, parks, docks, board of aldermen, 
borough president, board of estimate, comp- 
troller's office, mayor's office. 

6. Examination of facts regarding the city debt. 

7. Examination of facts regarding franchises. 

8. Sociological research: 

(a) Extent and cause of remediable conditions 
that indicate governmental responsibility for 
the physical deterioration of children ; for 
pauperism; for crime; for preventable 
disease, etc. 

(b) Other investigations that may from time to 
time indicate vast possibilities, but obviously 
requiring expenditures or continuity of ser- 
vice in excess of the capacity of existing 
volunteer associations. 

II 

MECHANISM NECESSARY FOR ACCOMPLISHING 
THIS WORK 

1. A governing body to consist of practical men 
seriously engaged in work that gives them vital 
and intelligent appreciation of the need for the 
scientific research contemplated. 

2. A responsible executive officer. 

3. Associate directors (two or three) to give their 
entire time to mapping out and supervising. 

4. Competent investigators of demonstrated capacity 
and reliability. 

5. A clerical staff highly efficient, graded according 



National Scope 287 

to quantity and quality of work to be undertaken 
by the chief investigators. 
6. Adequate equipment and housing of the staff with 
a view to making the Institute the national head- 
quarters for facts, standards of work, suggestions 
as to new fields, etc. 

Ill 

IN WHAT CITY SHALL THE WORK OF RESEARCH BEGIN? 

In New York City, — itself urgently in need of 
help, — whose standards are studied and imitated 
by every other city and whose conditions reveal 
tendencies and possibilities that can be more easily 
segregated and analysed than those of smaller 
communities. 

ELABORATION OF OUTLINE 

OF 

WORK TO BE DONE 

Inasmuch as a method has not hitherto been worked 
out for the scientific investigation of the subjects 
contained in the outline for Work to be Done 

. by the Institute for Municipal Research, it has 
seemed best in this elaboration to indicate the line 
of investigation not by propositions, but by ques- 
tions. This list of questions is by no means ex- 
haustive, but will serve to illustrate immediate 
needs. 

A. Analysis of Annual Budget 

1. Why should the public officer have intimate 

knowledge of the budget? 

2. Why should the taxpayer have intimate knowl- 

edge of the budget? 



288 Institute for Municipal Research 

3. Why should the press have intimate knowledge 
of the budget? 

4. What facts are now known to officer, taxpayer or 
press regarding the budget? 

5. What steps are now taken in making up the 
budget ? 

(a) By different departments? 

(b) By the board of estimate and apportion- 
ment ? 

6. Is this year's estimate based upon last year's 
estimate, last year's expenses or next year's need? 

7. In determining next year's need, is last year's 
estimate compared with last year's expenditures? 

8. Are errors in last year's estimate repeated in this 
year's estimate, or are they corrected? 

9. Has the board of estimate and apportionment 
any means of ascertaining whether this year's 
estimate is repeating errors contained in previous 
estimates ? 

10. How thoroughly is the annual budget now 
scrutinised by the superior officers of depart- 
ments, by the members of the board of estimate 
and apportionment, and how much of this work 
is left to subordinate officers? 

11. Is there provision at present for businesslike 
criticism of the budget by the departments, by 
the comptroller, by the mayor, by the president 
of the board of aldermen or by the other mem- 
bers of the board of estimate and apportion- 
ment ? 

IS. Are there well-defined steps within departments 
for the preparation of the budget; what are 
they? 

18. Are these steps uniform or has each department 



Analysis of Annual Budget 289 

its own method, varying with the department 
head or his chief subordinates ? 

14. Is any provision made to guarantee that de- 
partments are asking enough to insure economical 
expenditure, preservation of property, etc.? 

15. What method is there for explaining the budget 
to the general public in advance of action by the 
fiscal authorities? 

16. What is the rule with regard to changes in bud- 
getary appropriations by special resolution shift- 
ing appropriations from one head to another? 

17. Are these transactions known in advance to the 
taxpayer? 

18. Are such transactions remembered in preparing 
new budgets ? 

19. What is the rule with regard to supplementary 
appropriations ; are these remembered in prepar- 
ing succeeding budgets? 

SO. Are bond sales made with reference to present or 
future budgetary possibilities or may we by sale 
of bonds incur liabilities that must be met from 
current appropriations not contemplated by the 
budget ? 

SSI. Is there any check by the city on the expendi- 
ture of appropriations by departments? 

22. If the appropriation intended for twelve months 
is expended within nine, would the fiscal authori- 
ties be notified promptly of this policy? 

23. What is the present form of the budget? 

24. How should a budget be prepared in order to 
conform to the requirements of modern business 
methods ? 



290 Institute for Municipal Research 

B. Examination of Departmental Reports from 
the Standpoint of the Taxpayers' Interest i/n 
Results Accomplished. 

I. Does the department of education issue an an- 
nual report? 

#. What officials' signatures are attached to the 
chief and departmental reports? 

3. What time elapses between the end of the year 
whose work is reported and the issuing of the 
report ? 

4. How many copies are issued ; who is on the mail- 
ing list ? 

5. Do the reports indicate that the department ex- 
pects them to educate the public? 

6. Are the reports chiefly editorial and eulogistic, or 
do they explain clearly the problems confronting 
the department and the measure of success in cop- 
ing with these problems? 

7. Are there summary tables that show at a glance 
the results of last year's work, comparing them 
with the preceding year ? 

8. Is the tabular matter so presented as to bear out 
the editorial claims? 

9. Are educational results clearly shown? 

10. Are educational results compared with expenses 
incurred? 

II. Is it possible to compare teacher with teacher, 
school with school, district with district, with re- 
spect to pupils enrolled, pupils on average regis- 
ter, pupils attending regularly, percentage of 
promotion, percentage failing of promotion? 

12. Are discrepancies in tabular matter satisfac- 
torily explained editorially ? 

13. Is the number of children enrolled compared 



Examination of Departmental Reports 291 

with the number of children who ought to be en- 
rolled? 

14. How often, if ever, is a school census taken? 

15. Is there evidence that the department is attempt- 
ing to enforce the compulsory education law? 

16. Is its failure admitted and traced to definite 
causes that the public may help correct ? 

17. Is the percentage of children over age shown 
grade by grade and school by school? 

18. Is the presence of large numbers of backward 
children satisfactorily explained; is the public 
told what means are being taken to correct the 
situation? 

19. If the purpose of universal education is to "en- 
rich personality," does the report contain evi- 
dence that the present administration and the 
present curriculum give that result; is there evi- 
dence that it is failing to give result with a con- 
siderable proportion of children? 

20. Does the report show a comprehension of the 
social problems that must be first taught through 
the public-school system? 

£1. Is it demonstrable that evening schools are "en- 
riching personality" ; if so, is their extension pro- 
portionate to the community's needs? 

22. If kindergartens are justifiable, what propor- 
tion of the city is benefiting from them? 

23. Is their tardy extension explained in the report? 

24. Is there evidence that the results of vacation 
schools justify the expense ; if so, are enough dis- 
tricts benefiting from such schools? 

25. Do the reports of the department explain next 
year's needs and enable the public to give intelli- 
gent support to the budget estimates of the de- 
partment? 



292 Institute for Municipal Research 

26. Does the report indicate adequate accounting 
of funds expended and adequate recording of 
educational results day by day; if not, what 
changes are apparently needed? 

27. Does investigation of school records or of the 
methods of accounting confirm judgment based 
upon the report? 

28. If changes in methods of accounting and re- 
porting are needed, what additional information, 
or what further analysis should be recom- 
mended? 

29. What changes in technique are required if the 
report of the department is to be truly educa- 
tional ? 

30. What agencies can be used to secure in the de- 
partment of education adequate methods of 
accounting in its business departments, or record- 
ing educational results and of reporting signifi- 
cant school facts to the general public? 

31. What agencies can be utilised to secure from 
the city and from the department of education 
a curriculum and a policy of administration that 
will correct weaknesses revealed by adequate ac- 
counting and reporting? 

During the year 1905 the Association for Improving the Condi- 
tion of the Poor has aroused interest on the part of both fiscal 
and educational authorities in the situation brought to light by 
questions such as the preceding, with reference to the New York 
department of education. On the presentation of facts made 
possible by such methods the board of estimate adopted a new 
policy with regard to so-called special features of the school 
system, — popular lectures, vacation schools, recreation centres, 
night schools, — and practically tied its appropriations for this 
purpose. Later it requested the board of education to ask it for 
funds necessary to take a school census. A special committee of 



Sociological Research Needed 293 

the department of education has recommended a revision of the 
methods of accounting and reporting and the establishment of a 
central clearing house for school information. In addition 
economies have been effected aggregating hundreds of thousands 
of dollars, and the form of the superintendent's report has been 
considerably modified and somewhat improved. These really 
important results have been accomplished by the expenditure of 
but a few hundred dollars in giving publicity to investigations 
conducted incidentally by the officers of the Association and by 
expert advisers interested in school needs. 

Is there not reason to believe that similar results might be 
obtained by approaching in the same way various other city 
departments enumerated in the outline, and also the general 
subjects C to H inclusive, each of which is a veritable mine of 
sociological information ? 

H. Sociological Research 

The most important agency for benevolence is gov- 
ernment. The discoveries of the bacteriologist 
and the pathologist with regard to communicable 
disease have little more than academic interest un- 
til the government takes a hand in applying those 
lessons to segregation of centres of infection, 
their extermination and the eradication of causes 
that breed disease germs. Our American com- 
munities, legislatures, courts, etc., have long been 
committed to the propositions that "ignorance of 
my rights is infringement on my rights," and 
that "my neighbour shall so use his property that 
it shall not jeopardise me in the enjoyment of my 
property." 

In the field of sociology numerous things are hap- 
pening daily that jeopardise person and pro- 
perty, such as crime, pauperism and communi- 
cable disease. To treat results is not constructive. 



294 Institute for Municipal Research 

To discover and to remedy causes is constructive 
but is expensive. Remedies are frequently applied 
that are based upon superficial information. 
Existing voluntary associations have not the 
means to investigate speedily and thoroughly ex- 
planations or remedies that are from time to time 
proposed. An Institute for Municipal Research 
seeing clearly the need for governmental applica- 
tion of medical and sociological data could advise 
voluntary associations as to fruitful fields of ac- 
tivity, and should from time to time itself take 
the lead in opening up new fields. 

In June, 1906, ex-Mayor Low wrote as follows: 

Dear Sir — In reply to your letter of June 17th, ask- 
ing my opinion as to the value of an Institute for 
Municipal Research, I say without hesitation that I 
think such an Institute, appropriately endowed, would 
be an invaluable agency in elevating the standard of 
municipal administration throughout the country. I 
think it is not open to question that the science of 
statistics, as applied to railroads, has been revolution- 
ising, both as to economy of operation and as to ef- 
ficiency. Bookkeeping is only one form of research; 
but it is absolutely fundamental, wherever the efficiency 
and economy of administration is concerned. As ap- 
plied to educational problems, the same sort of study 
of detail is full of significance for the educator. It is 
a safe generalisation to say that the more the public 
and the public officials can know as to the details of 
city administration, the better. This does not mean 
that everybody will read the figures, for, as a matter 
of fact, very few will do so ; but the interested and 
capable few will read them, and they will be guides to 



The Institute Idea Tested 295 

lead the public on from point to point until the situa- 
tion is improved everywhere. 

The reason why an Institute of Municipal Research 
is needed in a country like ours springs from a variety 
of causes : partly from the size of the country, partly 
from the temporary nature of municipal office-holding, 
and partly from the fact that those who might do 
something, through their official positions, to aid such 
a cause either fail to command the leisure or the money 
or the disposition to do anything. A permanent 
bureau, well endowed and intelligently officered, would, 
in the course of a decade, in my judgment, have car- 
ried administration along many lines to a higher point 
than it has ever reached in this country ; and I can see 
no reason why the good influence of such work should 
not be permanent and continuous. 

After the idea had been tested for ten months by the 
Bureau of City Betterment the results were summar- 
ised as follows : 

1. The adoption of the principle by the board of 
aldermen and the board of estimate that future 
budgets should clearly indicate for what specific pur- 
poses the money voted is to be expended. 

2. The voting by the board of estimate, for the 
first time, of a classified departmental budget in which 
specific appropriations were made for specific needs 
and work to be done. 

3. The appointment of a salary commission by 
the mayor to establish a businesslike and equitable 
method of increasing the salaries of civil employees. 

4. The immediate discharge of an official proved 
incompetent and negligent. 



296 Institute for Municipal Research 

5. The appointment of a commission by the 
mayor to devise a method of abolishing and prevent- 
ing the recurrence of unsanitary and illegal condi- 
tions found in tenements owned by the city. 

6. The establishment of a special bureau in the 
city's law department to take up and press the claims 
of the city against street railroad companies for more 
than $1,000,000 for paving done at the public's ex- 
pense between the companies' rails, an«d the immediate 
institution of more than 100 suits to recover the money 
due. 

When these results were presented to Honourable 
Carroll D. Wright, formerly United States commis- 
sioner of labour, and Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, 
editor of the Century, they commented as follows. 

Carroll D. Wright, 
Clark College. 

Worcester, Mass., November 19, 1906. 

My dear Mr. Cutting — I had the pleasure on Satur- 
day of an exceedingly interesting conference with Mr. 
William H. Allen and Mr. Henry Bruere, and they 
gave me a very clear idea of plans looking to the 
founding of an Institute for Municipal Research, and 
I can assure you not only on account of their presenta- 
tion, but from my knowledge of your own desires and 
efforts during many years, that proposition met with 
my most cordial sympathy and approval. 

It seems to me that the municipal problem, as we 
know it popularly, constitutes one of the chief, if it is 
not the chief, problems of the day. Our cities grow so 
rapidly and they are so poorly governed that it is a 
matter of vital national importance that great reforms 



Carroll D. Wright Urges Institute 297 

should be inaugurated, for if the cities are corrupt the 
influence on the rest of the country will be disastrous. 
Any effort, therefore, looking to the collection of data 
and their proper analysis and interpretation relative to 
such affairs is one of the most intensely important 
measures that can be considered. Government cannot 
do this. It can collect data to a certain extent, but it 
cannot interpret them in the way they should be in- 
terpreted to secure the very best results. There must, 
therefore, be some such institution as that suggested — 
an Institute for Municipal Research. 

Now, such an Institute must not be a temporary af- 
fair. A temporary institution would fail, it seems to 
me, utterly in accomplishing the desired end. It must 
be an Institute so endowed that it can go on without 
anxiety relative to funds from year to year. I imagine 
it would be an easy matter to collect funds for a few 
years for such an institution. There are men enough 
in New York willing to contribute from time to time 
for its maintenance, but the viciousness of such a 
method is that the Institute might be brought under 
the influence of general control of some great interest 
on account of the amount of money contributed 
through or by that influence. This must be avoided 
if any really valuable results are to be expected. Such 
an Institute, therefore, as you have in mind should be 
put on a permanent basis. It will always find enough 
to do in various ways, for after the prevailing effects 
of mal-administration are removed there will be suf- 
ficient to keep an Institute of the kind employed in 
the best interests of the inhabitants of the cities and 
the country at large. 

So there should be secured a fund large enough to 
give an income of at least $100,000 a year — and bet- 



298 Institute for Municipal Research 

ter if $150,000 — to carry on the work of the Institute 
for Municipal Research. Of course, if any one man 
— and this would be the better way — would endow such 
an institution he could give it his own name, like the 
Brown Institute of Municipal Research; and I feel 
that whoever would endow such an Institute and give 
it his name would be building a monument as grand, 
if not grander than any that has yet been erected 
through any endowment. Scientific research is grand, 
and must be carried on. Educational matters are 
grand, and must be perpetuated, but an Institute that 
would attempt to bring about a better state of affairs 
in our cities comes home directly to the people at large. 

Of course, when you have gotten your endowment, 
then would come perhaps the more difficult question of 
just the man to put at the head of the new Institute. 
Such a man should have the confidence of the people 
without regard to party ; one of the grandest men in 
the country, for instance, who would be willing to de- 
vote the rest of his life to the solution of some of our 
very complicated and intricate social problems. 

The Carnegie Institution at Washington, through 
its department of economics and sociology, will ulti- 
mately, should occasion still exist, take up some of the 
municipal problems that vex the country, but that in- 
stitution would not devote itself and its income primar- 
ily and solely to such problems, for it must carry out 
its scientific investigations. Such work, therefore, 
would be incidental to its great work, but an Institute 
of Municipal Research would find ramification enough 
to make the organisation of such an Institute entirely 
legitimate, and I believe would be hailed by all parties 
without reference to political tendencies, certainly by 
all citizens who desire to see a change in municipal 



Richard Watson Gilder Urges Institute 299 

government. Such change could not be secured by the 
ordinary reform methods. Enthusiasm and rhetoric 
are not the things that are needed. Facts, through 
analysis and interpretation, are the evidence by which 
the people are to be instructed and the citizens supplied 
with information which will enable them to control 
their own governments ; for no reform can come to our 
cities unless our citizens have the information on which 
to base their actions. 

New York, November 21, 1906. 

Dear Sir — I have read the "Brief for the Establish- 
ment of an Institute for Municipal Research" and 
copy of Mr. Wright's letter to Mr. Cutting. 

This is a matter that particularly interests me, as I 
feel it is in the direction of fundamental reform. Dur- 
ing my official work in connection with the Tenement 
House Commission I became interested in the question 
of a municipal bureau of statistics. Later, through 
the efforts of a few, including Dr. Gould and President 
Low ( as member of the Charter Commission), such a 
bureau was established, but it was not conducted in a 
way that brought success, being unsupported by the 
Tammany administration, and in the revision of the 
charter this bureau was omitted. Something of the 
sort has been established, but it is subsidiary and in- 
sufficient. Such a bureau, properly and intelligently 
conducted, would be of great service. 

But a genuine bureau of municipal statistics, such as 
exists in some of the European cities, would not take 
the place of an Institute for Municipal Research such 
as you describe, and I think that the continuous work 
that would be done by such an Institute would help to 
improve conditions where improvement is greatly 
needed, namely, in our municipalities. As it is, here in 



800 Institute for Municipal Research 

New York not only are the higher authorities ignorant 
of the details of governmental service in the various de- 
partments, but the chiefs of the departments are igno- 
rant of the details of their own departments. Our 
Tenement House Committee of 1899 were able to pre- 
sent to the park department a fuller map of city parks 
than the department itself possessed. 

It will always be necessary to fight for good men in 
office and against those of low standards and danger- 
ous practices, but we shall be more apt to make reform 
permanent by the scientific inquiry, scientific informa- 
tion, and scientific suggestion of such an Institute. 

If an Institute like this were endowed it might be 
wise to arrange for a possible application of the funds 
to collateral purposes in case of such a change of con- 
ditions as would make this advisable. 



XV 

Efficiency in Making Bequests 

At the time when a civilised world was trying to decide 
how it ought to give away the Sage millions, a man in 
the throes of making a will wrote, — "Will you please 
send me the names of the most worthy charities in New 
York City, including hospitals?" Shortly before a 
lawyer had inquired if a client's property one hundred 
miles away could be used as a fresh air charity; a 
widow asked how $100 could perpetuate her husband's 
interest in worn-out tenement mothers ; a lady how 
$20,000 — "a trusted servant's savings" — could be in- 
vested in happiness and health for infants. 

Have you ever tried to answer such questions ? Have 
you computed the interest on $50,000,000 or $100,- 
000,000 and worked out details of a plan for using it 
so as to help, not injure, its recipients? When you try 
to cure insomnia by imagining yourself under obliga- 
tion to give away $1,000 every morning, do you ever 
get beyond the tenth morning? Then you know how 
great is the need for testator's handbooks and "Don'ts" 
and "First Helps" for will-makers. Volumes have 
been written to tell relief workers the danger of pau- 
perising needy families, begging letter writeis and 
street mendicants ; not enough has been written to show 
the danger of pauperising the charity worker himself, 



302 Efficiency in Making' Bequests 

or college president, hospital trustee, city board of 
aldermen, ladies' auxiliary of an orphan asylum or 
posterity. 

To discourage any form of giving is resented alike 
by giver, recipient and bystander. Somehow it sounds 
officious, cold, heartless, selfish, opinionated. Heaven 
knows there is all too little giving in this world any- 
way. Who would not "rather give to 99 frauds than 
let one hungry man go unfed?" Does not the Lord 
love the cheerful giver? Many readers who have 
agreed with the appeal for efficiency in school and 
hospital will intuitively draw the line on applying 
any other test whatever but the heart test to bequests 
and memorial gifts. Realising fully the strength of 
such intuition, I shall approach the question as nearly 
as possible from the point of view of the giver who 
feels that his giving is his own affair. I have long 
thought this the best way to interest men and women 
in the ineffectiveness of street alms. Mendicancy can- 
not exist unless the mendicant is given that which 
harms and demoralises instead of that which cures and 
elevates. Mendicancy itself — individual and institu- 
tional — consists not in asking for aid on the street or 
off, but in begging when one does not need or when one 
does not intend or is unable to use aid for the purpose 
advertised. Generous-hearted givers persist in offer- 
ing poison to sick men because their attention is 
focused on the giver or recipient, instead of on the 
gift itself and its history after leaving the giver. 



Illustrations of Efficient Giving 303 

So with benefactors of institutions, we may safely 
assume that they do not want to increase the sum total 
of unhappiness in the world nor do they wish to place 
their money permanently at one per cent, interest if it 
can be placed at six, or to do less "good" than is possi- 
ble when once they have selected their general line of 
benefaction. No mother wants to hurt orphans by her 
gift to an orphan asylum, or to abet neglect of un- 
sanitary conditions by her hospital gifts. Even when 
testators give for the sake of the world's applause, 
they would undoubtedly prefer to avoid criticism for 
having perpetuated a fraud and thus having defeated 
their own purpose. The conditions that to-day ham- 
per Girard College and prevent its leading in all edu- 
cational work, prove that there is a technique of mak- 
ing gifts as well as of using them. The reader will be 
able to cite scores of instances which show that giv- 
ing may be sadly inefficient. If it is to be efficient, it 
must be based upon desire to know, unit of inquiry, 
count, comparison, summary and the other ingredients 
of the statistical method. 

An excellent illustration of the method that leads to 
efficient giving is the following : Four years ago a re- 
tired manufacturer asked the president of his state 
board of health what kind of help the very poor 
needed most. Numerous suggestions were made, in- 
cluding the need for leadership in a popular crusade 
against consumption. Without disclosing his own 
identity, the possible giver communicated for over one 



304 Efficiency in Making Bequests 

year with a physician thought to be eminently qualified 
to organise such a crusade. A hundred units of in- 
quiry were found, — extent of the need, various meth- 
ods of fighting tuberculosis, world evidence of success- 
ful treatment, a detailed plan of procedure with esti- 
mates as to expense of publication, laboratories, dis- 
pensaries, administration. Had a steel mill been in- 
volved instead of a health crusade, the procedure could 
not have been more efficient than that which gave the 
world the Phipps Institute for the Study and Preven- 
tion of Tuberculosis. 

In May, 1906, Mr. Rockefeller sought from several 
social workers suggestions as to the use of certain va- 
cant property overlooking the East River and adjoin- 
ing the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. 
Playgrounds were the first thought of several. Another 
mentioned three needs: (1) Farm gardens for crip- 
pled children, with shelters and river breezes on the 
bluff for those not able to move about; (£) Day nur- 
sery; (3) Out-of-door, fresh air camp for very sick 
"summer complaint" babies and their mothers. When 
asked, "Which will have the greatest educational re- 
sults" he replied, "The camp demonstration that 
mothers can save their own babies in their own tene- 
ment homes if they will give them clean milk, clean air 
and clean bodies." An itemised estimate was required 
of cost, method of treating and teaching, and of re- 
sults to be expected. Inside of six weeks Junior Sea 
Breeze was opened and throughout the summer led the 




ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE 



JUNIOR SEA BREEZE 



EFFICIENT GIVING 

Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research is discovering new truth ; 
Junior Sea Breeze is placing that truth within the reach of tenement 
mothers. Who, whether speaking of the world-famed Institute or of the 
remodelled eighteenth-century mansion enlisted in the fight for clean 
milk, clean air and clean babies, can see a dividing line between charity 
and education ? 



Efficient Use of the Widow's Mite 305 

fight against preventable infant mortality, giving 
2,360 days' care to 204 babies, 14,000 days' enter- 
tainment and instruction to an average of 200 tene- 
ment mothers and children and suggestions for ap- 
plication elsewhere to 1,100 social workers, physi- 
cians, reporters, etc. 

The widow who wanted to establish a $100 memorial 
considered a score of means before finally purchasing 
two strong invalid rolling chairs. Forty mothers every 
summer will have ten days at the seashore, moving 
about among the hundreds of guests who are the living 
memorial of her husband's interest in Sea Breeze. Her 
method was as commendable as that of the two mil- 
lionaires, not because she had a mite, but because she 
spent it efficiently. 

Efficiency in will-making is obviously more difficult 
than efficiency in making ante-mortem gifts. It is 
conceivable for instance, that three wills drawn within 
the last four years made provision for a pioneer edu- 
cational crusade against tuberculosis, for a pioneer 
babies' camp in the heart of New York's tenement dis- 
trict and for two rolling chairs for Sea Breeze. If so, 
the bequests when available would be duplicating ef- 
fort already made and would in no case fulfil the pur- 
pose of the testator. Most wills involving large gifts 
for public purposes are made when the giver hopes, 
even if he does not expect, to live many years. Under 
these circumstances, an unelastic plan may, if ex- 
ecuted, prove to be the maximum of inefficiency. Why, 



306 Efficiency in Making Bequests 

then, attempt to fit future resources to present needs ? 
Is it not wiser to trust the spending of the legacy 
without condition to those whom the testator knows 
and likes? As in the case of street doles, the answer 
to these two questions depends upon what is done with 
the gift rather than upon the motive and the confi- 
dence of the giver or the goodness of the recipient. A 
few histories will show the importance of a testator's 
desiring to know what will in all probability be done 
with his bequest. 

A banker had heard so much of the struggles and 
economies of a certain hospital from his family physi- 
cian that he determined to leave it $50,000 for a 
memorial wing. When the wing was finished it bore 
the tablet, In Memoriam Mrs. Grateful Patient, and 
added $55,000 to the hospital's annual burden. No 
corresponding addition was made to the number of 
friends willing to support it. In fact, several large 
donations were reduced because it was imagined that 
the relatives of Mrs. Grateful Patient would give 
handsomely. The friend in need who had patiently 
met all former deficits announced that he could not 
carry the larger load, and after the first year would 
give $2,000 and no more. There was nothing to do 
but to face about and solicit the public subsidy that 
it believed inimical to private hospitals. The con- 
tributing public gradually fell off, mistakenly believ- 
ing that the city supported the hospital. For ten 
years every legacy received has gone to meet deficits ; 



Gifts That Subsidise Inefficiency 307 

wards are repeatedly closed for months for lack 
of funds ; to increase revenue, private patients are 
given all choice windows ; a large floating debt is 
carried, — a veritable Minotaur ready to swallow the 
next legac}^ and the next forever. For fear of losing 
the subsidy, the hospital managers have declined 
to take any part in the fight against preventable 
disease. 

A society once strong shows signs of age. Love of 
struggle has given way to love of ease. Work once 
fitted to a city's need is now calculated to perpetuate 
that need. Organised to relieve suffering, it lives to- 
day chiefly for itself. A large endowment makes it 
unnecessary to raise more than one-tenth of its sup- 
port from the public. Two or three more large lega- 
cies will remove this necessity. The bequests come. 
Even income is assured. The work is now nobody's 
business but the board of managers, whose con- 
tempt for the community injures every other charita- 
ble society, inhibits the desire to give, and retards 
the development of constructive social enter- 
prise. 

A college was started to hold high the banner of 
Methodism in a western state. Inscriptions show that 
all of the money came from the east, where the presi- 
dent has spent most of his time. It is hardly worth 
while trying to get support from the western coun- 
try which benefits from his college ; why bother with 
hundred dollar gifts when some mourning parent in 



308 Efficiency in Making Bequests 

Springfield or Boston will give $10,000 or more? 
The college has never acclimated itself. The western 
Methodists are pauperised and their children educated 
with equipment and educational talent inferior to that 
of the indigenous state university. 

Each of the instances cited can be multiplied almost 
indefinitely. In each the work the testator wished to 
further has been injured by his gift. Instead of bene- 
fit, the three beneficiaries received respectively impover- 
ishment, gout and pauperisation. In emphasising this 
fact, there is here no intention whatever to criticise the 
will-makers, but merely to point out that they did not 
get their money's worth. To pay out money or effort 
for certain disappointment is not efficient buying or 
efficient giving. 

It is possible to increase efficiency without at all at- 
tempting to change the motives that seem most fre- 
quently to prompt bequests : ( 1 ) Desire to perpetuate 
interest in a particular work or a particular class of 
sufferer. (£) Desire to please a friend. (3) Desire to 
avoid post-mortem censure. (4) Desire to appear pub- 
lic spirited. (5) Desire to establish a memorial for a 
relative. (6) Desire to do the fair thing by a society 
that protected the testator and furnished opportunity 
for making his fortune. (7) Desire to help where suf- 
fering receives least attention. Whatever the motive, 
it is human, and if possible should be put to uses that 
will neither defeat the testator's purpose nor put ob- 
stacles in the way of human progress. A father who 



Injuring Beneficiaries 309 

wants to keep his fortune in the family ought to be 
able to draw a will so that the family will not promptly 
divest itself of that fortune ; a mother who loves her son 
so dearly she cannot disinherit him, ought to be able 
to avoid encouraging him to disinherit and outlaw 
himself. Even though a testator's gift is sure to miss 
the centre of the target aimed at, he will, as a rule, 
enjoy placing that target with reference to his own 
eye and to his own rifle. 

The desire to perpetuate one's regular donation is 
presumably based upon the motives that prompted the 
gift during life. A merchant in the habit of giving 
$500 annually to a trade school wishes to make his 
personal interest perpetual by leaving it $12,500. 
Unless he has reason to fear that tendencies are at 
work which in time will make the school such as he 
would not wish to support, his plan is in the direction 
of efficiency. If, however, his $12,500 is fed the first 
year to Deficit, his giving is proved to be inefficient in 
so far as it failed to insure the perpetual life of the 
bequest. 

To give money to please a friend is one's privilege 
just as it is legitimate to spend one's own money to 
buy public applause, to silence censure or extol a 
family name. If the amount of the gift is small, the 
possible evil that might result from inefficient giving 
will be so small as to be ignored. But if the amount is 
large enough to change the current of the beneficiary's 
life most testators would prefer to give in a way that 



310 Efficiency in Making Bequests 

will in all likelihood increase, not decrease, the bene- 
ficiary's welfare. 

The immediate possibilities can be discovered from 
the practice of the agency one aims to help. If its 
current receipts are regularly below its current ex- 
penses, there is every reason to believe that a legacy 
will be used all at once or gradually to meet the deficit, 
unless the interest on the bequest is sufficient to fill in 
the gap. If deficits are the exception rather than the 
rule, it is important to learn how former legacies were 
used ; whether for sumptuous offices, for much-needed 
additions to equipment, for improvements in standards 
of service, for experiments of vast consequence or 
merely for piling up a sterile surplus. Future lega- 
cies, imposing no obligation whatever on the recipient, 
will probably be treated like the unrestricted legacies 
of the past. If the efficient will-maker decides that he 
prefers to share for all time in a society's work, he may 
condition the gift, i. e., principal to remain intact, in- 
terest only to be used. This often acts like a total 
abstinence pledge, a reminder in time of weakness of 
one's best intention when not under temptation. The 
efficient giver will impose no condition on the use of 
the interest beyond possibly a period of five or twenty- 
five years, during which he may reasonably expect 
that conditions will not have so changed as to make the 
stipulated work unnecessary. No efficient giver will 
subsidise a demand for distress, putting bounties 
on wolf scalps when all wolves have been exterm- 



Safeguarding Legacies 311 

inated except those specially reared to earn the 
bounty. 

Feeling that most testators have in mind to perpet- 
uate their co-operation, some societies provide in by- 
laws that all legacies, even when unrestricted, shall be 
placed at once in a Reserve or Endowment Fund. 
Sometimes, an unrestricted legacy becomes a restricted 
legacy by act of the beneficiary society, e. g., the 
James C. Carter Fund, the interest to be used in pro- 
moting some distinctively civic effort, such as proper 
administration of public baths or adequate milk inspec- 
tion. The floating or unrestricted Fund known as 
Endowment or Reserve, made up of legacies or frag- 
ments of legacies received during twenty or fifty years, 
is safer when reserved for emergencies only, and pro- 
tected by by-law as well as by tradition against hasty 
action. If a month's notice is required to draw upon 
the Reserve Fund, those who oppose this policy and 
perhaps those who favour it will often find some other 
means of meeting what may at first thought seem an 
emergency. If after due consideration there still 
exists an emergency or an exceptional opportunity to 
invest the legacy in the kind of happiness the testator 
wanted his gift to provide, many societies use the Re- 
serve. Relief societies, for example, often believe that 
their deceased benefactors would not wish them to re- 
fuse relief to those in urgent need so long as there is 
one dollar of the unconditioned legacies left. Many 
hospitals would feel it an affront to the memory of 



312 Efficiency in Making Bequests 

their benefactors to put surplus revenue in the bank 
instead of into the fight against conditions that cause 
sickness and deplete vitality. 

Conditioned or restricted legacies are in disfavour 
with many trustees. To them it seems inconsistent 
to be interested enough in a college to leave it $250,000 
and at the same time to distrust its ability to spend the 
money when and where it is most needed. But it just 
happens that large gifts are quite as apt to be due 
to regard for the college name or its past management 
as for its present directors. It is definite tradition, 
not an uncertain future, that the alumnus wishes to 
endow. He entrusts interest only, restricting and per- 
petuating the principal not because he lacks confi- 
dence in trustees, but because he would rather give a 
99 lease than a quit-claim deed. The injunction, — - 
"Do not look a gift horse in the mouth" does not apply 
to givers. 

It is quite conceivable that a man should consistently 
support a certain society while regretting certain char- 
acteristics that seemed to him to be imperfections. 
There are obvious reasons why one not directly 
charged with responsibility should not wish to condi- 
tion an annual contribution or in any way to reflect on 
management that seems to please others. Many of us 
subscribe to a magazine we don't want to buy outright 
and trust a broker to buy stock selected by us when 
we would not trust him to select the stock itself. Op- 
posed as they are to gifts with a string tied to them, 



Securing Elasticity 313 

trustees generally manage to be sincerely grateful 
for annuities. But they respectfully petition you not 
to tie the annuity to any purpose that is not capable 
of redefinition as time may change needs and resources 
for meeting needs. A serviceable qualifying clause 
would be, — "Whenever the need herein provided for 
shall have disappeared, or when responsibility for meet- 
ing it may be placed upon some other agency better 
equipped to meet it, the annuity may be used for edu- 
cational purposes in connection with the work con- 
ducted at the time by the beneficiary." 

Because true affection for a society's name and work 
accounts for most bequests for public purposes, testa- 
tors will continue to leave the spending of both interest 
and principal to the beneficiary's judgment. Men 
and women, who have themselves as trustees suffered 
the torments of uncertain income, will continue to feel 
that they qualify their generosity by restricting a 
legacy, — too much like inviting a private detective to 
oversee a lunch party. Such loyal friends may safe- 
guard their legacy and the traditions they love against 
the aggressive minority known to be on every board by 
asking that for 10, 25, or 50 years the disposition of 
the capital be explained to friends of the society in 
successive annual reports. For example : 

C. C. Smith Memorial Fund,— $50,000— 1885 ; In- 
tact. Interest used for five Smith Fellowships. 

Mary J. Walker Legacy,— $152,500 — 1903 ; 
$100,000 remaining in General Endowment. 



314 Efficiency in Making' Bequests 

$50,000 consumed in spreading broadcast the 
knowledge that bone tuberculosis is due to con- 
sumption ; that it should be prevented ; that it 
can be cured by out-of-door salt-air treatment. 
Fund of $250,000 raised for the first American 
Hospital presented to New York City in 1907. 

William Anderson Legacy, — $75,000 ; consumed 
for office building, 1903, that produces no reve- 
nue. 

Helen Pullman Legacy, — $300,000, consumed for 
office building, 1903. 

Legacies A-M. aggregating $37,800, consumed 
to meet annual deficits. 

Legacies N-V. — $50,000, used for dressing room, 
more suitable for a Roman bath than for surgi- 
cal work. 

James Read Legacy, — $1,000 — used for portrait 
of giver. 

In Memoriam N. D., — $100,000 — Half consumed to 
erect laboratory ; $50,000 invested ; interest used 
in publishing facts as to preventable infant mor- 
tality. 

Entirely apart from the moral support such a re- 
striction would give the trustees in time of need, the 
publication of an account of stewardship would stimu- 
late friends to make bequests that might be used in 
similar imaginative, helpful ways. One such restric- 
tion would compel a policy of complete frankness be- 
tween boards of managers and solicited prospective 
will-makers. 

When one has not yet made up his mind just what 
societies to help, there is a smoother road to efficiency 



Ideas Rarer than Willingness to Give 315 

in will-making. There are fewer prejudices to remove 
and no personal reasons for making the efficiency test 
seem out of place. Then most men will be grateful 
for fair answers to the one definite question in their 
minds, — "What are the worthy charities?" Unless 
they break that question up into parts, or unless their 
lawyer or consulting social expert "factors" this ques- 
tion, the Goodness Fallacy and Inefficiency will make 
most wills and start more soup kitchens or bread lines, 
where the maker of a will hoped to encourage industry. 
There is an ever-increasing class of men and women 
able to make large bequests, and willing to make them 
if shown how. Many of them, accustomed to apply 
the effectiveness test to investments during life, have 
come to believe sincerely with Professor Summer that 
"the next most pernicious thing to vice is charity in its 
broad sense." They distrust emotional appeals. 
They wish to picture to themselves the probable re- 
sults of their giving, and may be pardoned for pre- 
ferring something distinctive, expressive of their per- 
sonality, at least assurance that their message shall 
not be misinterpreted and no business principle vio- 
lated. They have a right to expect that societies seek- 
ing their co-operation will welcome businesslike ques- 
tions necessary to insure efficiency in giving. More 
givers of this class would undoubtedly be found if 
societies would anticipate questions, forecast the needs 
in their own fields and persistently offer opportunity to 
buyers. 



SI 6 Efficiency in Making Bequests 

What does a business man mean by "worthy char- 
ity?" Among other things he means worth while, not 
superfluous, well managed, efficient, an investment that 
pays no less than the current rate of dividend with an 
occasional special dividend. Besides practice with re- 
gard to endowment, he desires to know — although he 
may not be familiar enough with details to formulate 
questions — the extent to which a charity recognises 
the partnership of its contributors and the public, 
whether it studies and learns from its own experience, 
whether it gladly modifies its policy and technique to 
fit changing needs, what portion of the community's 
work it does, if it could easily be spared, its relative 
efficiency as compared with other charities doing simi- 
lar work, what needs its plans for the future disclose. 
To answer these questions requires study, it is true. 
Here is a place for the business doctor or for the 
prospective giver or his lawyer to turn diagnostician. 
It rests with societies that pray for bequests to accus- 
tom will-makers to demand statements of fact, rather 
than expressions of personal preference, from those 
asked for advice. What graft is more reprehensible 
than that of educational and other benevolent agencies 
which use a lawyer's influence rather than his intelli- 
gence or their own facts to get bequests? 

In default of reports and diagnosticians, the follow- 
ing suggestions may be of service in making wills for 
amounts small or large : 

1. Unless one cares — can give himself with his gift 



A Few Sign Boards 317 

— leave it to the public treasury where it will 
probably do less harm than if left to a charity. 

2. If one cares, let him make sure that his gift will 
relieve, not increase a burden. Do not give an 
elephant to a peasant. 

3. Avoid any inelastic condition. 

4. If temporary restrictions are to be imposed, give 
to the least popular or less popular rather than 
the most popular aspect of the beneficiaries' work. 
A relief society needs its need for coal quite as 
much as the coal; to relieve it of the appealing 
power that grows out of this need may reduce its 
total contributions by many times the value of 
the coal. 

5. To specify that a legacy or its income shall not 
be used for salaries or other expenses of manage- 
ment may invite waste and inefficiency. It re- 
quires money to spend money efficiently. 

6. To give specifically for salaries and management 
will often convert an inefficient into an efficient 
society, and enable it to increase the community's 
interest in its work. Many societies fail for want 
of a hearing. 

7. Accompany unrestricted legacies by a request 
for an annual accounting for principal, through 
the first 10, 25 or 50 years. 

8. No society should be encouraged to pile up a sur- 
plus. 

9. The presumption is strongly in favour of a 
society's dependence upon the public for the 
major portion of its support. 

10. Endowed brains can adapt themselves to chang- 
ing needs ; brick and mortar cannot. 

Illustrative of alternatives to be considered by men 



318 Efficiency in Making Bequests 

wishing to invest in human happiness is the following 
argument for spending $20,000 on facts regarding 
the enforcement of the tenement house law rather than 
a million on model tenements : 

June 16th, 1906. 

Dear Sir — You expressed interest in our babies' 
camp in the heart of the city that will try to prove to 
tenement mothers that they can do much to save their 
own babies, can sterilise their own bottles, food recep- 
tacles and clothes, and of themselves bring fresh air 
and cleanliness into their homes. You endorse, 
secondly, our grafting this program upon a rickety 
old mansion to emphasise the strong presumption that 
no floors and walls are too old to be cleansed, no house 
too old to be properly ventilated and freed from ver- 
min, — that existing facilities can be utilised to increase 
human happiness and save human life. 

In approaching my suggestion to a PPty the same 
principle to inherited civic and political institutions 
and agencies will you make with me four assumptions : 

1. That the A. I. C. P. present to you reports on 
four phases of the tenement problem. 

2. That on the merits of the case presented you in- 
vest $1,000,000 in new tenements in the city; 
$1,000,000 in new tenements in districts not yet 
built up; $1,000,000 in old tenements to be re- 
modelled; $1,000,000 in guaranteeing three or 
five year leases of old tenements. 

3. That directly in these ways you could give new 
homes in the city to from 400 to 700 families, 
new homes in unbuilt districts to from 400 to 
700 families, homes in remodelled old houses 
owned by you to from 600 to 900 families, and 



Efficient Tenement Reform 319 

improved administration of leased old houses to 
from 5,000 to 7,000 families. 
4. That each investment pays 4% net on your 
money and that results surpass all expectations so 
far as families directly involved are concerned. 

You would then have invested $4,000,000 and have 
reached directly from 6,000 to 8,000 different ten- 
ants, from 1%% to 2% of the total tenement popula- 
tion. Your new construction would represent about 
10% of the average yearly new construction. How 
will you get to the 98% of the tenement population 
not directly involved in your enterprises the benefits 
of your investment? 

Will you not find yourself in the position of having 
a vast amount of material valuable alike to tenant, 
landlord and taxpayer, which material without a dis- 
tinct militant, educational program, takes its chance 
of being unused or sporadically used, often misrepre- 
sented by the press and superficial students. Without 
this aggressive, educational program your efforts 
would soon be concentrated upon administration 
rather than upon sanitation and tenement reform, for 
these depend rather upon social bookkeeping than 
model building. At least such has been the history 
of model tenements, whether private or municipal, in 
every section of the world. Just as soon as new ideas 
and standards of construction become established, the 
sometime model of brick and mortar becomes a back 
number, an obstacle instead of an aid to progress. 

I realise the sweeping character of the statement that 
there is not in existence to-day a block of model tene- 
ments whose owners are conducting a sustained, edu- 
cational campaign in behalf of better tenements for 
the entire community of which they are but a very 



320 Efficiency in Making Bequests 

small part. An eminent sanitarian, medical officer of 
a large British city, told me in 1899, — "This city as 
landlord is to-day erecting model tenements which its 
council as sanitarian should ten years from now con- 
demn as public nuisances." When the A. I. C. P. 
brought about the establishment of the City and Su- 
burban Homes Company it relaxed efforts to secure 
tenement reform. It was not the City and Suburban 
Homes Company that brought to a head New York's 
tenement house legislation and the tenement house de- 
partment ; on the contrary it was a group of men 
who spent time and money in producing and publish- 
ing intelligence. For want of adequate expenditure 
of time and money on ascertaining and publishing the 
truth regarding the present enforcement of the tene- 
ment house law, tens of thousands of violations are 
being disregarded with impunity, the enforcement of 
the law has grown weaker instead of stronger, and the 
public is relying upon a security that is too largely 
fictitious. 

Models within four walls cannot adapt themselves 
quickly to new discoveries and new social conditions; 
ideas and standards will grow if given a chance and 
will carry the public with them. Why assume the load 
of remodelling and constructing when this can be 
placed upon other shoulders by proper educational 
work ? 

An efficient educator could utilise the wealth of infor- 
mation now possessed by the tenement house depart- 
ment and could ascertain facts from charitable agents 
familiar with tenement conditions, as well as from 
properly directed investigators. A sum expended to 
publish facts regarding failure to enforce even the 
minimum provisions of the tenement house law, and 



Efficient Inspection vs. Model Building 321 

failure to educate the public as to the needs made ob- 
vious since the tenement house department was es- 
tablished, would accomplish more in the way of educat- 
ing landlord, tenant, city official, philanthropists and 
other communities than a hundred times the same 
amount of money spent in a model tenement scheme 
alone. All of these classes desire information ; all will 
use it if they are shown how. If they will not use it 
we have at once revealed the need for funds such as it 
is proposed to put into construction or re-modelling. 
In the absence of such information and in the light of 
any investigation that we have at present, it is the 
merest guess work to attempt to do the right thing 
in the matter of tenement reform. 

The strongest argument against municipal or state 
socialism is not that it restricts the freedom of the in- 
dividual but that it hampers the municipality or the 
state, making it reactionary at the very time it 
should become progressive. I believe you will agree 
that at the present time, toward correcting the evils 
of ignorance, bad business judgment and disregard of 
the rights of tenants to safe and decent surroundings, 
the facts learned by one efficient tenement-house in- 
spector, properly used, would surely accomplish more 
than a block of model tenements. To define the limits 
within which the individual may operate so as to help 
not injure his fellow-man is in itself socialistic, but is 
it not the only alternative to the state and municipal 
socialism now making such tremendous headway be- 
cause both friend and opponent are compelled to work 
inefficiently without facts? 

No one questions the wisdom of backing up the defini- 
tions of the tenement house law by an annual ex- 
penditure of $800,000 or $1,000,000, yet we have the 



322 Efficiency in Making Bequests 

anomalous situation where the community is not spend- 
ing one dollar to find out whether the $800,000 is giv- 
ing the result desired. We spend $30,000,000 a year 
on "universal education." This means from $350 to 
$500 per school child during the years from seven to 
14. From the years 14 to 70 "universal education" is 
left to chance, sensationalism and methods antagonis- 
tic to or incompatible with true education. Generally 
speaking there is not at present any large agency that 
will show those between 14 and 70 how to form an in- 
telligent judgment regarding social and civic prob- 
lems. 

Efficient citizenship, which is after all what college 
presidents and editors mean when they talk of good 
citizenship, is not possible without more information 
than we have to-day. . . . 

The foregoing letter led to a request for an itemised 
plan, which is here submitted : 

July 10, 1906. 

How interest on $1,000,000 could be used for an ex- 
tensive, scientific investigation of the tenement house 
problem, — 

SALARIES 

Investigator in Charge $5,000 

Office Assistant 2,000 

One Correspondent 1,500 

Expert on Tenement Construction 3,500 

Field Secretary 3,000 

Ten Inspectors 10,000 

Stenographers and Clerical Help 6,000 

— $31,000 

Rent 1,500 



Budget for Scientific Investigation 323 

OFFICE FURNITURE 

Fifteen Desks $600 

Rugs and Fittings 200 

Six Typewriters 600 

Filing Cards. ! 500 

Files 600 

2,500 

MISCELLANEOUS EXPENSES 

Postage and Stationery $1,250 

Carfares 750 

Railroad Fare, etc 1,000 

Unclassified Expenses 2,000 

5,000 

Grand Total $40,000 

Should the fund yield $45,000 instead of $40,000, 
the balance could be well used, some of it to remunerate 
consultants for studying and advising with the regular 
staff, or perhaps to organise conferences, interest the 
press, add one or two inspectors or one or two statis- 
tical assistants. 

The above estimates should be regarded as but ap- 
proximations, based upon the experience of Mr. 
Tucker and myself with this Association, and with the 
more superficial investigations that in the past have 
been possible. It is more than likely that a man cap- 
able of organising the inquiry would wish three 
months, or six, for preparation, thus reducing the first 
year's estimate. He might also wish to distribute dif- 
ferently the sums available. The salary estimates for 
stenographers, etc., are liberal, it being assumed 
throughout that efficient service is more economical at 
a high salary than inefficient service at a low salary. 



324 Efficiency in Making Bequests 

One item, Field Secretary, I hope will appeal to you. 
Almost every city in the country is interested in New 
York experience. At the present time an inquiring 
student or officer in the west, or south or northwest, 
can address no one who has the time or the knowledge 
to find out by correspondence or interview exactly what 
particular problems must be solved in the community 
concerned. A letter is written to the A. I. C. P., 
C. O. S. or to the tenement house department and a 
more or less sympathetic answer is sent, stating that 
if Chicago people wish to acquaint themselves with 
housing reform they may consult certain well-known 
reference books. Our idea in suggesting a high-grade 
correspondent and field secretary, is to emphasise the 
missionary possibility of a New York office able to 
give the time and money necessary to help intelligently 
other communities that wish to prevent a repetition of 
New York evils. We can easily imagine that in the 
course of the second or third or the fifth year it would 
seem worth while to increase the allowance for the 
field secretary, even at the expense of New York in- 
spectors. It should be possible to secure from other 
communities a considerable portion of the travelling 
expense of a field secretary. 

This man, like the investigator in charge, his as- 
sistant and the correspondent — why not inspectors as 
well ? — should be, and can be, 'primarily educators, able 
to marshal information in an interesting and convinc- 
ing way. 

The inquiry itself would probably begin with a close 
study of tenement house statistics, methods of adminis- 
tration, etc., to learn how far their records answer 
questions as to enforcement of the present law, its de- 
fects, relation of rent to standard of living, sickness in 



Large Giving Seeks Opportunities 325 

the tenements, development of less congested districts. 
By the time a site was selected for investment of a mil- 
lion dollars in model domiciles and buildings ready for 
occupancy, the investigator and staff would be in pos- 
session of more knowledge regarding tenement needs 
than is now possessed by any body of men or by any 
library. 

Will you permit me to add that exactly the same need 
exists and exactly the same kind of work could be or- 
ganised, and should be organised, to learn the facts 
and to publish the facts regarding: The making of 
budgets for city departments ; health administration, 
death rate and vitality rate in different districts ; the 
charities department; children's court; probation 
and county j ail evils ; inspection of milk and other 
foods sold in the tenements; inefficiency of the state 
health and dairy commissions; physical condition of 
school children; effect of school curriculum on indus- 
trial efficiency; character of accounts and reports of 
both public and private institutions appealing to the 
public for support. 

The large giving of recent years has sought educa- 
tional opportunities. If the Carnegie libraries seem 
an exception, it must be remembered that each library 
is given on condition that the beneficiary shall give as- 
surance that books will be forever accessible. Our uni- 
versities and colleges have added to equipment and 
endowment by leaps and bounds. In this prosperity 
charitable agencies have not participated largely, 
owing to the double conviction thUft the most efficient 
giving is for education and that charitable work and 
education are mutually exclusive. Just as the term 



326 Efficiency in Making Bequests 

statistician came to be applied to the clerk who added 
instead of to the man that questioned, so we have a ten- 
dency to use education and educational institution 
synonymously. An agency that is not called a school, 
college or university is not considered educational. 
The man who teaches outside of school walls is not an 
educator. From this confusion of purpose with means 
it happens that the teaching done by charitable and 
religious organisations is not properly recognised as 
education. The new interest awakened by their teach- 
ing redounds to the financial benefit of schools and col- 
leges. 

As a matter of fact, much work done by colleges and 
schools is not educational. The best work done by hos- 
pitals and charities is educational. The charity budget 
of educational institutions, such as Harvard and 
Yale for men and Vassar and Smith for women, is 
larger every year than that of any individual relief 
society in New York City. The student whose wealthy 
father pays $150 for instruction that costs $500 is no 
less an object of charity than is the poor mother who 
receives $2 in a relief bureau for making a garment 
worth only $1. The woman who does that sewing is 
taking part in an educational process just as truly as 
is the college student. There is a vast amount of re- 
search that does not find out anything. Much work 
that cures is preventive. Much so-called preventive 
work neither prevents nor cures. The times call for 
endowments not of things and names of things, 



Endowment of Truth 327 

whether charity, hospital or college, but of truth. 
Whatever its name, no endowment can be truly edu- 
cational that does not perpetually facilitate the appli- 
cation of truth to man's environment, in order that 
this shall be better to-morrow than to-day, and that 
obstacles to human happiness progressively decrease 
and opportunity for development toward happiness 
progressively increase. It rests with the individual 
giver whether or not his bequest shall educate for all 
time. 

A great service would be rendered if some philan- 
thropist should offer prizes for suggestions to will- 
makers that would crystallise our best analysis of past 
experience. These prizes should be large enough to 
entice the most capable students, and numerous enough 
to interest every city and every state. At least one 
prize should go to each state for a plan best fitted to 
local and state needs. Two or three or five general 
prizes might be given for papers superior in prin- 
ciple and in technique of presentation. Thus local 
needs, state needs and national needs would be under 
observation and criticism, and we would not be so un- 
prepared to dispose efficiently of large and small en- 
dowments as we seem to be at present. 



XVI 

A Chapter of False Syntax 

Academic: Irresponsible; picked up in college; 
visionary ; born of other men's ideas, not of con- 
ditions. Often used for what one does not yet un- 
derstand, or for principles too difficult to under- 
stand. Too indiscriminate a word for every-day 
use. 

Administration: Management; bossing. The admin- 
istrative head of an office, — the one who puts to- 
gether in one combination water and coal and 
matches and engine so as to make the whole thing 
go; the one finally to blame for mistakes 
made. 

Asset and Liability Accounting : Quite as necessary 
for government and philanthropy as for private 
business. A school board should know what its 
property is worth, where located and how soon it 
need be replaced. It should know of books, sup- 
plies, and cash on hand. It should also know what 
it owes. When a site is contracted for, its price 
should be entered against the site fund, showing 
clearly the available balance. Annual reports 
should tell stockholders — supporters — not only 
the balance as a whole, but for each separate 



Odds and Ends S2§ 

fund, i. e., — what sums they could realise net 
after paying all obligations, what remains in 
each fund for the next year's work. 

Attack on Character: naked folly ; premium on ma- 
terialism; disregard for ethics and virtue. So a 
southern editor describes the chapter on The 
Goodness Fallacy. He then asks virtuously if 
badness should be regarded as the chief qualifi- 
cation of a pastor. Instead of underestimating 
goodness, the efficiency test recognises that good- 
ness is everywhere, showered like Heaven's rain 
and like eyes and hair and teeth, on the fit and the 
unfit, on the efficient and the inefficient. Good- 
ness refers no more to the fitness of a pastor than 
the term poor applied to imitation means that the 
poor imitation is without a bank balance. On this 
account and not because it has no intrinsic value, 
goodness of itself is an untrustworthy guide in 
choosing a pastor, a cook or a president. Ef- 
ficiency tests, by adjusting burden to capacity, 
utilise character to its utmost. Goodness tests 
waste character and energy by asking or allowing 
goodness to undertake work for which it is not 
prepared. 

Audit should be by some one outside the board that 
is rendering an account of stewardship. Audit of 
cash transactions helps little, for dishonesty is not 
frequent enough or simple enough to be thus de- 
tected. Audit of cost incurred, of administrative 



330 Odds and Ends 

results and of methods employed can be of great 
service if made by an efficient business doctor. 
Average: To be inspected before using. Prolific 
source of mis-education. Average income nobody 
ever has ; average man nobody ever sees ; average 
price nobody ever pays. Generally a more service- 
able unit can be found. Average is helpful when 
it means "safe to count on." If a longshoreman 
earns $2 a day for 200 days, and finds $10 
on each of 10 days, he may not safely plan his 
expenses at $2.30 a day, but will, if wise, keep 
down to $2 a day. If the average income of a 
town of 501 men is made up of the wages of 500 
men, $1,000 a day, plus the profits of one man, 
$500 a day, the 500 may not count on the aver- 
age return of $2.99 a day each. "Average from 
20 to 30" is frequently used when the observer 
can count on at least 20 and frequently sees 30. 
"Strike an average," "get an average," etc., 
should be avoided beyond the point where analy- 
sis of experience shows what in all likelihood will 
happen ; what may be counted upon if conditions 
do not change. Character as an average of a 
man's action refers to his probable performance 
under given conditions, I. e., will not think of 
stealing if cash register and audit are efficient; 
will not swear in the presence of ladies ; is gener- 
ous with that portion of income above $10,000 
a year. 



Odds and Ends 331 

Bibliography: (1) A double entry, loose sheet, 
cumulative ledger, the left column noting things 
you desire to know about your efficiency as trus- 
tee, official or citizen, and a column at the right to 
give answers to questions. (2) Classified press 
items and newspaper articles pertaining to ef- 
ficiency or inefficiency of officials during the pro- 
bationary period necessary to acquire habits of 
classifying impressions. (3) Public reports of 
activities regarding which you express opinion. 

(4) Bulletins of permanent census bureau. 

(5) Annual messages of President Roosevelt 
(1906) and Governor Hughes (1907) ; studies 
in interpretation of official responsibility. (6) 
Charities and Commons (New York). (7) 
System (New York). (8) National Hospital 
Record (Detroit). (9) School Administration 
Studies by Teachers College (New York). (10) 
Proceedings, State and National Conferences, — 
National Municipal League ; Massachusetts State 
Civic League; Charities and Correction; Na- 
tional Education Association ; American Bankers' 
Association. (11) Keep Commission's reports on 
business methods used by the national govern- 
ment. (12) Finance Commission's (appointed 
by Mayor McClellan, New York City) report 
on right principles of taxation, on methods of 
taxation employed by New York City, and on 
accounting methods. (13) School Statistics 



332 Odds and Ends 

Urged by National Educators (School Review, 
Volume 13, Halle D. Woods). (14) Serviceable 
Books: Vital Statistics, Newsholme; Darwin- 
ism and Politics, Ritchie; Physics and Politics, 
Bagehot; Ethical Gains Through Legislation, 
Kelley; Bitter Cry of the Children, Spargo; 
Principles of Relief, Devine; A Ten Years 9 
War (against the slum) Riis ; Applied Sociology, 
Ward. 

Cash Accounting shows cash transactions only. 
Generally misrepresents work done because it fails 
to include goods used but not paid for, while not 
infrequently including goods used last year but 
paid for this year, or goods carried forward from 
the preceding year. Extreme illustration; the 
overseers of the richest suburb of New York City 
report, — "We have saved a great deal this year 
by eating the cows off the farm instead of buying 
meat." Again, the treasurer of a religious or- 
ganisation reports a cash balance of $275, and 
receives congratulations for her management; 
later a cost accounting discloses $10,000 debts 
unpaid. 

Character: A personality tablet; a composite pic- 
ture of what is most apt to happen when others 
come in contact with us. Character is not 
synonymous with virtue, but refers to objective 
acts likely to be performed. When the cook re- 
quests a character, she wants her mistress to say 



Odds and Ends 333 

not that she is a virtuous, law-abiding, truthful 
woman, who stays home nights, but that she is a 
first-class cook, who does not become periodically 
incapacitated by fits of temper or by that species 
of alcoholism which the craft euphoniously calls 
indigestion. Persons of equal and similar subjec- 
tive virtues may have characters widely different 
in capacity and trustworthiness. 

Census : A count of units ; earlier a count of popu- 
lation taken by the national government in years 
divisible by 10; certain additional counts are 
taken by several states in years divisible by 5, 
thus giving two counts every decade; count of 
school population, annual in some states, bien- 
nial in others, never in the majority. Permanent 
national census bureau will demonstrate the 
economy and superiority of permanent state bu- 
reaus and permanent registration of children of 
school age. Census light is cheaper and more 
luminous, if constant. 

Charity: What a man gets when he swears off his 
taxes below his share; the difference between 
tuition at college and actual cost of tuition to 
the community; the doles exacted by employers 
who require overtime without pay. Inappro- 
priately applied to aid given to so-called poor. 
Originally broad enough to include a feeling that 
events often compel the poor to have toward the 
rich. 



334 Odds and Ends 

City Record of New York City ; ideal of "minutiae 
publicity"; sure haystack for official needles. 
If efficiently edited a City Record would be of 
inestimable value. 

Conservative : A shut sesame, awe-fully pronounced 
to prevent candid analysis of past experience. 
Should frighten no one and allure no one. The 
conservative of yesterday becomes to-morrow's 
reactionary unless willing to be radical to-day. 
Nothing can be more radical in the destructive 
sense than to hold to theories or practices that 
tests have proved inefficient. 

Control by knowledge of what is happening is the 
only control possible where opportunities for 
errors are numerous. An officer, attempting to 
exercise control by perfunctorily reviewing the 
work of twenty others, protested that it was not 
fair to hold him responsible unless he "could keep 
his hands on the work." He was told, "You can- 
not keep your hands on unless you take them off." 
Thenceforth control was exercised by studying 
summaries that showed results, instead of in- 
numerable details that showed nothing. 

Cost Accounting shows goods and service used dur- 
ing the year reported, no matter when paid for. 
Contributions in kind should be included, also 
rebates, accounts unpaid, depreciation in value 

• of plant, taxes unpaid. In learning the cost to 
the community of charitable and religious work, 



Odds and Ends 335 

taxes remitted should be computed. If cost ac- 
counts compare, subtract, reduce to percentages, 
classify and summarise, they and they alone dis- 
close economy, extravagance, efficiency and in- 
efficiency. 

Crime: Putting a letter in the toe of a slipper sent 
through the Christmas mail as merchandise ; tip- 
ping a building inspector to pass on to the next 
house ; making false entries on trust books ; rebat- 
ing; stealing bread. Complete statistics of crime 
would enumerate all criminal acts committed. 
Our present unreliable statistics of crime are 
sometimes of acts detected, sometimes of persons 
convicted, but generally of sentences served. 

Deficit: From the words de, meaning subtraction, 
and facio, meaning to work. De — ficit, work not 
done. Popularly applied to bills not paid. In 
social work should be returned to its original 
meaning to define the gap between what might 
have been done or what ought to have been done 
and what was actually done. 

Director: In an orchestra one who directs; in high 
finance apparently one who is directed ; in philan- 
thropy often just a member of a board. Always 
and everywhere one who should make liberal use 
of efficiency tests. 

Directory of Directors of civic and charitable 
societies needed. In most cities would show a few 
men on board after board, a "breeding in" proc- 



336 Odds and Ends 

ess that is no safer in philanthropy than in horti- 
culture. If urged that this repeating broadens 
the directors in their sympathy, it may be replied 
that it also narrows the community in its effort. 
The greater the repeating, the more necessary 
to director and contributor are result tests in 
black and white. 

Displacement : A term used to show how much water 
a boat drives out of place. An empty boat may 
have the displacement of five tons; when filled 
with coal, it may have a displacement of two 
thousand tons. Individuals have displacement, 
representing the amount of space or the amount 
of attention that must be reserved by others when 
their personality enters a group. A man's dis- 
placement (to paraphrase Brander Matthews) 
depends upon his talent, his character, and his 
technique. The only one of the three that he 
is able to change quickly by intelligent work is 
technique. Other men help him when they meas- 
ure him by efficiency tests. 

Evolutionary: Doing in Rome as the Romans do. 
Sometimes up and sometimes down ; sometimes 
toward efficiency and sometimes toward in- 
efficiency. Special service to the average man is 
justifying conviction that heaven has not con- 
demned him to stand still, and that it pays to 
analyse both himself and Rome. Man's kind of 
evolution may be made more efficient than na- 



Odds and Ends 337 

ture's because more direct and less wasteful. (See 
Darwinism and Politics, Ritchie. ) 

Flexible Grading fits curriculum to child instead of 
sacrificing child to curriculum ; keeps every child 
at its maximum speed in each subject; increases 
competition by putting pupils with their peers 
instead of "binding together in lockstep" the 
very bright, the very dull and the shades be- 
tween. Certain advocates are delaying the adop- 
tion of flexible grading by decrying classification 
and statistics. Flexible grading will fail utterly 
unless it uses statistics and classification more con- 
stantly and more intelligently than inflexible 
grading ever used them. There is no essential 
school fact now brought out by advanced stu- 
dents that school records themselves could not 
have revealed twenty-five years ago. 

Gambling: Letting well enough alone; believing 
that "all will turn out well" because "every year 
shows some progress." 

Golden Rule: Imposes a great obligation that, in 
these days of complex relations to our neighbour, 
requires the statistical method. Passive, negative 
goodness is insufficient to discover others' need 
and others' relation to us. 

G. P.: Grateful Patient. Source of unendowed 
memorial wards and buildings. Title not yet 
disassociated from a family physician's personal 
influence enviously called "pull" by profes- 



338 Odds and Ends 

sional colleagues. Authorises giver to tax other 
men to keep the memorial wreath green in perpe- 
tuity. It prohibits elasticity and adaptation of 
hospital and school management to conditions un- 
foreseen by the giver. G. P. can be made an 
enviable title if knowledge of a community's 
needs is made as universal as that of the three r's. 

Horizontal Cut: A method borrowed by finance 
officers from ice-cream venders ; up and down cut 
without regard to thickness of layers, taking off 
twice as much chocolate as vanilla, or relatively 
twice as much from one department as from an- 
other, thus slashing into necessities and economies 
as well as into waste. 

Idiosyncracy : One hospital president's characterisa- 
tion of the public's failure to support hospital 
work. 

Keep Commission, appointed by President Roose- 
velt, Honourable C. H. Keep, chairman, has 
made valuable recommendations as to reducing 
the complexity, clerical labour and waste involved 
in government work. A valuable supplement to 
the Commission is a voluntary association, just 
formed, of government employees, whose pur- 
pose is to hasten the introduction of efficiency 
tests into government service. 

Lawyer Fallacy: That lawyers make efficient law 
makers; that a knowledge of law requisite for 
admission to the bar, or for successful evasion of 



Odds and Ends 339 

law, qualifies a man to see what laws are needed 
by the community and how they should be 
worded, and how enforced for the general welfare. 

Man of Affairs Fallacy: That success in massing a 
fortune or in conducting a business enterprise fits 
a man to legislate or administer for other men's 
business or for public protection against his own 
business. 

Motives are hidden from mortal view. Acts we can 
see, count, record, value. Seldom are anti-social 
deeds committed in the rays of a searchlight. 
Bad motives do not disqualify a man who is under 
constant supervision any more than stammering 
disqualifies a copyist, lameness a desk clerk, or 
predisposition to alcoholism a man in a country 
where no alcohol exists. Efficiency tests that ap- 
ply constant supervision gradually strengthen 
the weak and change anti-social (bad) motives 
into social (good) motives. 

Municipal Journal: An attractive opportunity for 
philanthropy. Education, not trade, should be 
its first aim; should have at least $20,000 per 
year; results would justify $50,000; would be 
welcomed by public officers throughout the coun- 
try. Influence once established, advertising would 
decrease annual expense or provide funds for 
expansion of educational work. A brilliant 
illustration is offered by London's Municipal 
Journal. 



840 Odds and Ends 

Municipal Program: An idea and a book, both 
emanating from the National Municipal League. 
A suggestive and helpful composite of the best 
thought of the foremost students of administra- 
tion in America as to municipal charters, division 
of responsibility, home rule, taxation, uniformity 
of accounting. Emphatically endorses Boston's 
idea of "minutiae reporting." Fails to recognise 
the importance of a clearing house of operative 
facts as a basis of budget making. Accepts New 
York's idea of "minutiae reporting" by the comp- 
troller, that covers up a multitude of sins, ex- 
travagances and extravaganzas. "This is crazy 
finance. It would bankrupt any concern that did 
not have unlimited resources behind them." 
(N. Y. Times, January 8, 1907). 

People's Lobby: A recent flurry in fact market 
characterised by "selling short" ; panic will ensue 
unless People's Investigation is brought in to 
support the market. Heartily approved by 
President Roosevelt. Is led by eminent journal- 
ists and educators. Headquarters, Washing- 
ton. Principle of watching and reporting legis- 
lation should be extended to states and cities. 

Presumption in favour of: Weather vane; points in 
the direction of ; j udging from experience should 
happen. To establish a presumption is to find 
out what experience teaches is likely to happen. 
New conditions may change the vane. The pre- 



Odds and Ends 341 

sumption lodges a burden of proof. If the per 
capita cost of this month is higher than last there 
is presumption of extravagance ; facts may re- 
move the presumption; guesses should never be 
permitted to remove a presumption. 

Preventive Medicine should be taught at Johns Hop- 
kins, Harvard, Columbia, Pennsylvania, Rush 
and other great medical schools, and endowed. 
No man should be licensed to practise medicine 
until he can earn a grade .of 95 in state medi- 
cine, in public health, in sanitary administration 
and in vital statistics. 

Proficient: Advanced in acquirement. Efficient: 
Having all energy or power requisite. 

Promotion by Subject: Two years ago the hobby of 
Charles S. Hartwell, Brooklyn Teachers' Asso- 
ciation. To-day the sign of progressiveness in 
high schools but still a stranger to lower grades. 
Mr. Hartwell was prompted to his crusade by a 
class of 30 in English, 18 of whom were taking 
the subject a second time, although they had 
passed creditably the first time ; they had failed in 
German or history or mathematics. This waste of 
time of teacher and pupil, that drives many pupils 
from high school who are among the most fit to sur- 
vive, is called "pedagogically immoral," "thresh- 
ing out old straw," "grinding sharp saws." For sta- 
tistics as to promotion by subject address Charles 
S. Hartwell, 473 Madison Street, Brooklyn. 



342 Odds and Ends 

Public Accountant: An itinerant bookkeeper who 
sells his time to tell whether or not a stationary 
bookkeeper's addition and classification are cor- 
rect or incorrect. Here and there, one who scorns 
statistics and the statistical method, professes to 
be thoroughly practical and refuses to apply any 
theory to his business. An itinerant bookkeeper 
who had the good fortune to be called a book- 
keeper at the time a state examination for ac- 
countancy was ordered, or who later demonstrated 
in examination that he was able to post books 
and add columns correctly, is permitted to call 
himself C. P. A., Certified Public Accountant. 
In engaging a C. P. A., try to find one who does 
not deplore the tendency to substitute the states- 
manship of statistics for detective skill ; and avoid 
those willing (if the fee justifies) to prove 
that current expenditures are capital invest- 
ments. 

Red Tape: Sometimes unreasonable attention to 
prescribed rule; sometimes colour blindness or a 
kind of cataract resulting in confusion of tape, 
that marks the shortest difference between need 
and relief, with tape unravelled by offensive or 
indifferent officials. Too indiscriminate a word 
for every-day use. 

Religion: Perception of other's rights as the meas- 
sure of our responsibility. "Love thy neighbour 
as thyself" cannot be practised without efficiency 



Odds and Ends 343 

tests for religious living, for government and for 
citizenship. 

Review of Charities and Correction, of education, 
of hospital and social work needed in every state 
and in every large city. From 40 to 60 agencies 
are frequently represented in one issue of the 
New Jersey Review. The state press quotes lib- 
erally. Charities and The Commons is somewhat 
like college athletics, confined to teams ; some pro- 
vision should be made to reach the rank and file ; 
$5,000 a year would bring good results in New 
York City. Journals are numerous whose busi- 
ness it is to educate the profession ; j ournals are 
needed to educate the non-professional, the 
parent, the taxpayer, the not-yet official. 

Rights: Most of the rights we call inalienable are 
political rights, seldom associated with every-day 
comforts, necessities and pleasures. How can a 
child who talks through his nose be enthusiastic 
over the right of free speech? Of what good is 
freedom of the press to those for whom reading 
is harder than sweatshop toil? How futile the 
right to trial by jury, if physical defects make 
a child unable to do what the law expects ! 
Who would not exchange right of petition for 
ability to earn a living? Children permanently 
condemned by removable defects to pursuing 
bread and butter, and permanently incapacitated 
to share the law's benefits, cannot appreciate 



844 Odds and Ends 

the free pursuit of happiness or equality before 
the law. 

Among the rights now denied a large percent- 
age of our children are the right to health, the 
right to schooling that educates, the right to in- 
dustrial efficiency, the right to a body capable 
of enjoying life's battle and efficiency's reward. 
Children throughout the country, in parochial and 
private schools and institutions, have the right 
to be examined at once and told what their physi- 
cal defects are, if any, and how to correct them. 
Any child between four and 16 has the right to be 
found, counted and helped by a school census. 
Every child has the right to learn that simplified 
breathing is more necessary than simplified spell- 
ing, that nose + adenoids makes backwardness, 
that decayed teeth X 10 gives mal-nutrition, and 
that hypertrophied tonsils are infinitely more 
menacing than hypertrophied playfulness. He 
has the right to learn that his own mother, in his 
own home, with the aid of his family physician, 
can remove his physical defects so that it will be 
unnecessary for outsiders to give him a palliative 
free lunch at school, thus neglecting the cause of 
his defects and those of his brothers and sisters. 
(See Economic Maxims, S. N. Patten, in Theory 
of Prosperity). 
Simplified Breathmg results from removing ade- 
noids and enlarged tonsils, which if unremoved, 



Odds and Ends 345 

handicap children in school and in later life. At 
Rochester, N. Y. (Medical Officer, Dr. Goler), 
work certificates are withheld until simplified 
breathing and sound teeth are secured. Country 
children need attention as well as city children. 
A large proportion of pupils who block the lower 
grades are backward because of obstructed 
breathing, not because of mental deficiency. A 
Simplified Breathing Board, properly subsi- 
dised, would accomplish wonders. 

Simplified Spelling of the language in which you 
and I describe our simple annals has been ad- 
judged an extra-presidential problem. Simpli- 
fied spelling of national experience is a presiden- 
tial duty. With few exceptions official truth is 
now spelled as it does not sound. To simplify 
it will require far more than 300 petty mutila- 
tions, yet will be infinitely easier than to re-make 
the English language. 

Social Bookkeeping: Keeping track of social con- 
ditions, as minutes of a board keep track of its 
duties. As important to statesmen as a ship's 
log to ship's captain. 

Survival of the Fittest: A degenerate phrase. 
Once meant that low, simple types give way to 
higher, more complex types. Now means those 
survive who survive, or whatever is is right. Can 
be restored by efficiency tests to usefulness in the 
vernacular of government. 



346 Odds and Ends 

Tabulate: To arrange in rows or columns, facts 
counted regarding the same units of inquiry so 
that in adding, subtracting, multiplying, divid- 
ing or describing they will be kept separate from 
units of a different kind. Time is saved and 
efficiency made easy by providing day by day tab- 
ulation of bills paid and work done. 

Theoretical: Mistakenly used to characterise bad 
theory. Theory may be good or bad. There is 
nothing more impractical in the world than the 
so-called practical man who abhors underlying 
principles and refuses to study experience. He is 
constantly making false judgments and blocking 
progress. The only means of being practical is 
to be efficiently theoretical. 

Unclassified Totals: A grab-bag of figures; a 
meaningless collection of things different from 
each other ; a mis-statement of fact that confuses 
writer and reader alike. Total sittings, 531,000 ; 
total children, 601,000; deficiency of sittings, 
70,000. When 5,000 high school sittings are 
added, does the deficiency fall to 65,000? The 
only reason for comparing seats and children is to 
learn the number of children who have no seats. 
Sittings on Mars are quite as relevant to the part 
time evil as unoccupied seats in a high school. 
Classifying seats by grades led in New York to 
the consolidation of certain upper grades, thus 
releasing rooms and buildings for those who over- 
crowd the lower grades. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



027 292 592 6 



